Alastor Moody and the Methods of Engineering
by joshudson
Summary: Harry Potter has failed in his quest to stop Lord Voldermort from taking over the world. It now falls to Alastor Moody and whoever can aid him. Branch from HPMOR after chapter 130.
1. Chapter 114: Failure

This story branches from Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality after chapter 113.

If you have not read HPMOR up to that point first, this will not make sense.

CHAPTER 114: Failure

Fifty seconds.

 _I know ssecretss you would like to know. I hessitate. There arre ssecrets whosse verry knowledge would cosst you. Will take time to work out hhow to tell you without rissking world._

The Dark Lord was intrigued. Of course that was the point.

 _Time you have little of. Wasste not and try not myy patiensse._

A short pause. The boy who lived collected his thoughts.

 _Will you gamble on losing ability to casst killing cursse with hate? Am cerrtain you will not losse ability to casst with indifferensse._

The Dark Lord paused. A couple of the death eaters were able to make out the look of bewilderment on his face. Harry wasn't even paying attention.

 _I'll take the gamble._

There was a thread of moonlight coming from Harry's wand, and he hissed something in parsletongue so quietly that Voldemort failed to hear it.

 _Sspeak up boy. I guess thiss is someting of the guardian charm._

 _For my father, I offer thiss ssecret. Tell it only to thosse who cannot casst guardian charm and the killing cursse, elsse at your peril. Vow warns ssomehow. Ssurprised I can sspeak. Charm that destroyss life-eaters can only be casst with utter rejection of death. You will never be able to casst it, but perchance you can find ssomeone who can. The happy thought ussed is the earth and the people of the earth among the sstars. Your ssecret sspell may insspire ssomeone to learn it._

The Dark Lord was no fool, but he trusted his wards. He pondered how he could possibly use this. Depriving somebody of the killing curse wasn't likely to be useful, and it couldn't kill him anyway. Maybe it had only the obvious use.

 _Interessting. Your father's life I grant. Any more ssecretss?_ Mr. Bronze, recast the anti-time-turner ward, and put more magic behind it this time.

 _It is not for no reasson I chosse that one. Before I sselect another, you must hear thiss. The power to desstroy death musst not end even if I musst. I give you thiss one chance to end death. If you find no one to tell thiss ssecret to you wasste it, and death takes all in the end, even you. Your horcruxess won't last forever._

 _I appreciate your warning. I feel generous. If you tell me how you know my horcruxess will not lasst forever I grant you one friend._

 _I am not abssolutely certain I know how, but I believe template-on decay. Yet if not thiss ssomething elsse in time. The ssecond law cannot be dissplaced unless you managed to make the pioneer plack a ssource of magic, and I am ccertain you did not. Nevelle Longbottom._

The Dark Lord was not amused. _Any more ssecretss?_

Harry Potter took a calculated risk. _Among my books if you looked you would find a book called timelesss physsicss. It is a powerful grimoile if you can managed to rip the ssecret from it. To avoid attracting attention, buy another copy from a muggle booksstore._

 _Come on, what iss the ssecret within?_

 _No wordss in ssnake sspeech. Clearly it hass to do with one of my sspecial sspells._

A pause. Not quite long enough for the Dark Lord to come up with a response.

 _My mother. And for Lesah Lestrange I give you thiss. Time turnerss are blocked from full action. By sscience time travel is not limited to ssix hourss._

"Stun him. Now."

"Stupefy." "Stupefy." "Stupefy." "Somnium." "Stupefy." "Stupefy." "Prismatus."

Most of the stunners bounced off. The last one crashed through, sending up a shower of sparkles. Harry dodged it. Mr. White went down, hit by a reflected bolt. But death eaters were too battle hardened to be daunted by this.

"Stupefy." "Stupefy." "Stupefy."

Harry Potter went down. Two seconds later there was a brilliant glow that enveloped his body and disappeared again, taking Harry with it.

"Crucio."

* * *

Alastor Moody was startled by the patronous before him. As a long-time member of the order of the phoenix he knew about sending messages with patronouses. But nobody had told him about one looking like a man before. There was no time to ponder this though, as it spoke very quickly.

"Ask transfiguration teacher my transfiguration go to my father add wisdom to yours rescue girl heroine when you can war upon us vulcan seriously do not reply-"

Moody possessed wisdom enough to understand not to ask for clarification. A compressed message like that meant the sender had little time indeed. A minute's pondering allowed him to expand as follows: "Ask Minerva McGonagall about someone with a new transfiguration spell and go to my father and add his wisdom to yours. Rescue heroine (Hermoine?) when you can. War is upon us. Do not reply because I cannot risk the reply being overheard." The single word vulcan would have to wait for later to be understood. Moody knew about the Greek god and the connection to molten rock but neither made immediate sense here. But who could be the sender? Nothing to do but go ask.

Getting into Hogwarts by floo was easy enough, but only when he found the great hall empty did he remember to check the clock. Ah, it's the time of a Quiddich match. It took an annoying amount of time to walk the distance to the Quiddich field. He walked up to Minerva and quickly cast a quieting charm before asking "Who has a new transfiguration spell and a human patronous?"

Minerva was so startled she nearly jumped out of her skin. "Mad-Eye? What on earth is going on?"

"A patronous message. It said war is upon us and I should ask you about some new transfiguration spell. I can guess you-know-who is back, but not the charm, and it must be extremely useful to be worth mentioning in a message shortened to the point of removing all its grammar."

"Harry Potter has a new transfiguration spell but I don't think he can cast patronous."

What do you know and how do you know it. "Right. It would have to be some other student with a new transfiguration spell who would know to call for my aid then. We should leave this place."

Minerva was not the least bit slow to the uptake. The two of them started walking to the edge of the Hogwarts wards at a very fast pace. As soon as she was far enough away to not worry about being overheard, which was not very far at all on account of all the shouting which would be quite loud on even an ordinary Quiddich match without Harry's disturbance, she cast her patronous and said "Go to Dumbledore and tell him we need him immediately." Her cat only looked at her sadly. "Never mind come along we could use some light anyway." Of course she knew she didn't have to command a patronous to move with words, but she needed to steady her nerves.

The strange darkness wasn't helping anybody's nerves either. By the light of Minerva's silver cat the grass was green but the shadows quickly overtook the grass and it was dark. The stars shown bright against the pitch-black sky, and that was odd for the time of year. The sun had set not long ago but the twilight had faded to black so fast it was like it was vanished.

Ut oh thought Alastor, who had caught on faster than Minerva what it meant when a patronous didn't go where it was sent. "As soon as we get outside Hogwarts I need you to apparate us to Harry's father's house. I hope we're not too late. In the meantime what's with his transfiguration."

Minerva swallowed. "Harry can transfigure part of an object without changing the whole thing. He kept on talking about science and timeless physics, and a bunch of stuff I didn't get at all, but he did it. I saw him transfigure a patch of glass to steel. Dumbledore warned me not to tell anybody, but I don't think he's with us anymore. He said it was a power the Dark Lord knows not. I can certainly see that. Yet against the Dark Lord of what use could it possibly be?"

"On a related note, is there another girl in the school whose name sounds like heroine besides the obvious?"

"There is not."

That's it then. "Harry's in grave trouble and knows we cannot get to him. He has passed on his quest to us. We're about to cross the ward boundaries. Can you apparate us both to Harry's house? I'm not quite sure where it is."


	2. Chapter 115: Touch and Go

CHAPTER 115: Touch and Go

Professor Michael Evans-Verres had gotten some idea that the danger was very great. He had no idea how to combat it, but he reasoned since the wizards had not conquered Britain long ago they really weren't all that powerful. Nevertheless, not being a man given to carelessness of thought, he took heed that they were more powerful than ordinary men, and the fame of his son had made him a target. Since the state would not be of any help, he decided he would take matters into his own hands. In Britain it was very illegal, but there was nothing for it. He obtained a shotgun and kept it loaded.

Professor Evans-Verres was sitting in his comfy chair reading the latest science journal. It wasn't exactly normal for him to be up this late, but it wasn't unheard of either. There was a pop in the next room, a room he knew had only one door and nobody could get to it without passing in front of him. He looked up, and saw something moving through the open door. He ran up the stairs for his shotgun. Once he had his shotgun in hand, he proceeded back to confront whomever it was in his house. He could hear the sound of books being tossed aside, as though somebody was making a very hasty search for some particular book and hadn't quite gotten the knack of the double-stacked bookshelves. The tossing of books annoyed him. He got a look at a tall man in black robes, right about the same time the robed man noticed him, and turned towards him wand in hand.

"Avrake-" BLAM!

Michael recognized a hostile gesture when he saw one. He was not a particularly good shot. In fact he was a rotten shot, having never fired a gun in his life before. He had his eye down the site, but he tracked the motion of the wand hand rather than center of mass like he should have. His aim was not true, but with this weapon it didn't make a difference. The dark lord's wand hand exploded. There was a scream, he staggered back, and -pop- he was gone.

Thought caught up with him. He realized he was in trouble. The wizards before had come through the front door after knocking. He now realized they did that only to be polite, and it wasn't just Dumbledore who could teleport around more or less at will. His first action was a sensible one however, he went back upstairs.

Petuna was screaming. "What have you done! The police will be down on us! How could you do such a thing! I told you that shotgun was a bad idea from the start! Now you're really going to get it!"

"Whoever it was, he could pop in and out and had a wand in his hand. The police are the least of our worries right now." That wasn't going to cut it, not by a long shot, but at least she wasn't screaming.

He took the box of shells and reloaded his shotgun. Hardly had he done so than there were two more pops downstairs. With an oath he proceeded back to the top of the stairs to investigate, and to kill if provoked even a little bit, this time with the box of shells in his left hand. He'd have to drop it to aim but whatever. On recognizing Minerva he decided that whoever the man was, he was not a threat despite looking very much like one by his posture and his scars.

Alastor spoke first. "I see we are in time."

Petuna spoke. Michael hadn't realized she had followed him out. "No you're not. Michael shot somebody."

"And who do you suppose?"

Michael spoke. "Some wizard. He didn't seem very nice. He pointed his wand at me and said something like abracadabra, only he didn't get all the way through before I shot his hand off. He didn't stick around. He made quite the mess in the other room. Must have been looking for a book. He could have just asked."

"What did he look like?"

"He was very tall, wore black robes and a belt with a pistol strapped to his left side, and had a nose that looked rather too large and green paint on his arms."

"No mask?"

"Nope."

"Well done man. I believe the dark lord came himself and you injured him. I don't see him recovering from that very quickly-"

Minerva jumped in, "I don't think that's going to help as much as we would like. He still has one hand left and it won't take him long to get another wand."

"Quite right." and then to Michael, "I don't suppose you have a book on timeless physics."

"Yes."

"Let's get it and get out of here before he returns. That's probably the book he's looking for. Harry said to add your wisdom to mine. We don't have much time, but if there's any more books we really ought to take, we can get them."

Professor Michael Evans-Verres didn't waste any time. "Get your overnight bag Petuna and stuff your things in it and my toothbrush. I'll get the books and we're out of here." He grabbed an introductory calculus textbook, Timeless Physics, the set of Feynman lectures on physics, the journal volume Classical and Quantum Gravity 11(5), an astronomy pocket book, the Starflight Handbook, a thin notebook where he had scribbled some notes on orbital mechanics, a chemistry textbook, the Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, and a series of lecture notes labeled Physics of Star Trek.

The selection of textbooks makes little sense if you're plotting battle, but it makes a lot of sense if you think you need to rebuild knowledge of physics, have plenty of time to do it, and power sources and raw materials readily available. He had neglected biology, but that could be looked to in the future, or so he thought. Besides, his wife had packed quite quickly for once and was coming down the stairs already. It was time to go. He really didn't want to be around when the one-handed wizard came back.

Michael Evans-Verres was a biology professor, not a physics professor, but he knew his physics inside and out, and that was what was going to be needed anyway. They would need leverage, and biology just wouldn't provide the kind of leverage required. Not for the first time, he regretted his son not telling him everything.

-pop- and they were gone.

Not two minutes later the police arrived. Letting off a shotgun attracts attention of course. The next morning's paper reported there was a shooting of a burglar, and neither Mr. nor Mrs. Evans-Verres were anywhere to be found. The editors went on and on about the audacity of firing on an unarmed man. It wasn't true, but they didn't know any better.


	3. Chapter 116: Preparation

Chapter 116: Preparation

Raiding the Ministry of Magic was ordinarily a stupid idea, but they needed supplies, and the dark lord was on the loose. Four time turners, a broom (Minerva had hers in her pouch already), and two pouches later they were gone.

Unfortunately, the death eater's wards against time turners work quite well. A time-turned rescue of Harry was not going to work. This did, however, give them most of two more hours to put to good use, in which the death eaters could (probably) not yet persue them.

* * *

"You stole from the Ministry's supplies", Amelia Bones was screaming, "you tried to confront the Dark Lord without even notifying aurors, and you brought these muggles here. Are you out of your blooming minds? There'll be hell to pay-"

"This muggle", Alastor countered, "has bloodied the Dark Lord. Dumbledore is lost. You should take up your position in the Wizengamot, though I don't think you can hold it for long."

"Nobody has ever laid finger, spell, hex, or jink on the Dark Lord, and few have confronted him and lived. How did you this deed?"

"Shotgun", Michael offered.

Amelia Bones was not happy. "He will hunt you to the ends of the earth!"

"Well that solves that problem." Then to his newly acquired pouch, "Starflight Handbook." Up came one textbook. "Here is knowledge. If you have wisdom, and if power can be had (and I saw last summer that the laws of thermodynamics can be set aside) we can go farther than the ends of the earth."

It was a poor choice of words on his part. Amelia frowned, though with her wrinkled leathery old skin it was hard to tell.

* * *

Diagon Alley had its stores of magical supplies, and when you truly don't care about how many galleons you spend because you know you won't be around tomorrow to worry if you don't spend them like water, you can get quite a lot of stuff.

Minerva broke the law a few times in buying magical artifacts for the Evans-Verres couple. She was acting like a true Gryffindor for once. It needed doing with what Michael was planning. The full magnitude she had not caught on yet, but some inkling of it was there to be seen for anybody who chose to see it. Into pouches went shelves of bezors, a few custom healing potions for which an all-purpose bezor just wouldn't cut it, fast-acting anti-bends potions (why in the world Michael insisted on those she could not grasp, but Alastor assured her he saw something in it). But the chests really did seem like too much. They were too heavy to haul around when running for your lives and she was convinced they would run out of something else before the potions they could fit into pouches. Alastor Moody laid down his own coin for them, and then converted a tall stack of galleons to muggle money. He said only "We're not done shopping yet."

The bookstore. Alastor Moody bought a few first year textbooks, including potions and some elementary charms, then talked very carefully with the store owner. It seemed strange to the store owner how the books on how to create new charms made sense to buy at the same time as the first year books, and for the same person no less. Pressing without explaining was obnoxious, but trying to explain the madness of what he was going to /do/ was worse. Eventually the store owner relented because it was Moody and his hands had plenty of galleons, and not because he had a lick of sense at all.

* * *

The diving sport store was closed. This did not bother Alastor Moody at all. He apprated in, selected two diving pressure suits (what luck the store even had them; most stores only had sport wetsuits and drysuits, neither of which would cut it for this), dropped the amount of money the signs said they cost, and apparated out. It didn't feel like stealing in the slightest. His money was as good as anybody else's, and the shop owner simply wasn't around to receive it.

Minerva was beginning to catch on. Obviously Michael meant to get beyond reach of magic.

* * *

Hours later, Hermoine awoke. The night was cool, and the stars shone brightly overhead. Whatever Tom Riddle had done to hide the twilight and the moon was still operating, but she did not know this. She looked around, discovered she could see by starlight well enough to walk around without bumping into anything, found Harry's pouch lying there, and picked it up. She didn't yet know it was Harry's pouch, but it seemed like a good idea anyway.

Slowly thought caught up with her as she blundered her way back to Hogwarts and to the Ravenclaw tower. The painting asked "What takes but never gives?" which was entirely the wrong riddle to select for this particular occasion. Hermoine lifted her hand to knock on the frame of the painting, and not yet knowing her own strength, gave the painting a tremendous jarring. The painting perceived its own foolishness and opened.

Between the adrenaline still coursing through her blood and being off schedule, for the day for her should have had a few more hours in it, she was not yet tired. Her blow had awoken quite a few Ravenclaws and the girls had taken notice of her pretty fast when she got in. It did not take too long for someone to send for Professor Flitwick.

Professor Flitwick was in turn not in a particularly good mood for having been awoken and certain it was a prank in incredibly poor taste. On finding Hermoine his first words were Polyflus Reverso. After trying a few other anti-shapechanging spells and discovering they just bounce off, he gave up.

"I suppose I'm just going to have to believe you really are her then", he said. Of course nobody would go through that much work to make a false body and not be prepared to lie about it. "I'd much rather have my best student alive than dead anyway. Welcome back!"

AN: Hermoine does not have super sight. I can see like this.


	4. Chapter 117: Flight

CHAPTER 117: Flight

Minerva McGonagall sat on a broom high over Britain, occasionally checking her watch. How had Alastor talked her into this? Oh right. She was the transfiguration expert, and if you were going to thoroughly break the rules of transfiguration it would benefit to be the expert. Besides, she was lighter, and that made it easier. Still, there was something not quite sane about sitting on a broom so high that she could see the thin blue line of earth in a hastily obtained diving pressure suit, breathing via a bubble-head charm, and trusting to a watch and a sheet of paper worked out by a muggle. Arithmancy was a thing, but whoever heard of a muggle doing it? She had scarcely believed it when she heard they had a machine for doing this stuff. For all the preparations and careful planning, this seemed to her to be about the second-most Gryffindor thing she had ever done.

Some time before, she realized that Alastor had realized very quickly that Michael had not been joking when he said that pursued to the ends of the earth was not a problem. Of course all they had she do was ask Petuna to spare themselves many minutes of trouble, but nobody thought of that. The problem with apparation was you couldn't use it to get where you've never been, but there was a little bit of a cheat to that. If you knew there was an open space on the other side, apprating through a door wasn't that hard.

The spells required were agumenti, frigidero, transfiguration, colloportus, and alhomara. To save her magic, Alastor prepared her the ice cubes and stuffed them into her pouch, as well as transfigured and locked in place the mounting points and the car battery on the end of her broom. Yeah sure the lighting could be done with more magic, but she was pushing it as it was and any tiny bit of safeguard would be really nice here. There were way too many ways this could go wrong already.

Michael had with some trouble worked out a flight plan for intercepting the space station. Once there, Minerva would proceed to the exact center and prepare a portkey. They would from that point portkey back and forth to resupply at will, and use the unreachable vantage point of the space station as a base to which to retreat, rest, heal, and plan. War was upon them, and some of them knew what to expect. A plan of this design would have normally drawn a Dreadful grade in transfiguration class if any student had proposed anything like this long chain of spells, but there was no obvious simplifications, and war breeds desperate measures.

On second thought, the Dreadful grade might be a little high. This reads more like one of the papers that Minerva graded every year where she would have to council the writer to give up free transfiguration and only use established charms. At least she had got rid of the helmet that the diving pressure suit goes with. It was awkward and limited her vision too much. Instead she had to deal with the blue edge of the bubble-head charm being a little too close to the blue of the earth for comfort. There was nothing for it so on she went.

Minerva withdrew ice cubes from her pouch one by one, transfigured them into triplets of connected solid fuel rockets, and put them back. It's kind of a trick to transfigure one ice cube into three rockets, but this would reduce the total magic load by reducing the number of locking charms required.

Minerva locked the last triplet of rockets into place and checked her watch. Less than two minutes to go. Not bad at all. She carefully cast a low power protego, careful to use as little magic as possible. Even with their careful conservation, she really didn't have enough for contingencies, and a lack of contingencies here meant that one thing wrong was a more sure death that facing the Dark Lord. She watched her watch tick to the appointed time and pressed the switch. There was a pillar of white fire.

It seemed to her too soon the fire went out, and she saw she was moving faster than a broom had ever gone. There was little time for reflection, though. Quickly she unlocked the rockets, took two more triplets from her pouch, locked them in place, and checked her watch. This time she only had to wait five seconds for the appointed time.

Over and over again she repeated the steps. After the ninth, she saw that she had forty minutes to wait rather than a few seconds. She realized she hadn't cast transfiguration for long enough on the last pair of triplets, and hastily sustained the transfiguration. There were a few more ice cubes not yet transfigured in her pouch for "course corrections" as Michael had put it, but how she was going to use them she had no idea. There was no way she could do the math in her head, and she couldn't use a quill here.

Minerva dismissed the protego and allowed herself to relax and look around. The sun rose swiftly, and the stars disappeared from her sight. While she was looking over her shoulder, the space station rose into the sunlight. Shining in the light of the sun, the solar panels that powered the space station were unmistakable. To her the scene was surreal. She had no idea of the what must be magnificent speed at which she was traveling but the space station seemed to be moving slowly, almost imperceptibly towards her but not straight towards her. Having come this far, she finally trusted the numbers.

The space station drifted to one side. When it seemed to her it was almost sideways compared to the direction she was traveling it was time. She ignited the rockets. When the fire stopped she saw it was just hanging there a little more than a mile away from her. Such an aim was very good, you could say that magic was involved; but Minerva was slightly annoyed. She remembered not to try to fly her broom (nobody knew what the rules might be) but only point it whichever direction she wanted to go.

In a flash Minerva understood what to do with the extra ice cubes. Each one could be transfigured into a small rocket to close the distance, and forty minutes had been plenty of time to recharge her magic. Only a few minutes later she was really close to the space station, but only after passing by it did she remember to use another rocket in the opposite direction to stop. Another try brought her near it and drifting along it at a slow speed. One apparation later she was inside.

The first thing she noticed was the whiteness of the interior, followed by the magnificent cleanness that muggles didn't typically have. It looked very much like somebody had been using scourgify all over the place. Yet despite all that there was a ridiculous amount of clutter on all sides so that she could not determine which was the floor. It was all very unusual for she had never seen anything like this kind of pressed for space design.

Her arrival did not go unnoticed. "Who are you?"

* * *

While Minerva was flying, Alastor finally got around to asking Michael a question that had been in the back of his mind for quite some time now.

"What is vulcan that your son would be surprised at its very existence or possibly thinks we would not believe in its existence and important enough to warrant mention in a compressed tactical message?"

Michael smiled and said "We have them!"

In a moment, he continued "I know not how he could have learned such a thing, but I know the source from which he draws. Vulcan is the name for a race in an old science fiction telly show, but if he now believes Vulcan now exists and saw fit to tell us, I know what power that implies. It is well we are going to the ISS. If you don't know it, than neither does the Dark Lord and it shall yet be his undoing."

And Michael seemed to laugh. "Too long have our worlds been apart. By might and industry and the fusion of magic and science we ought to have set sail for the stars by now. What we shall do to prepare to meet the Dark Lord shall be marvelous to behold!"

Alastor's mood was much more solemn. "A power the Dark Lord knows not. It was said that Harry would posess some such power. I begin to understand."


	5. Chapter 118: Trouble

CHAPTER 118: Trouble

Amelia Bones stood on the podium in the Wizengamot. She was not happy. An emergency meeting had been called before the sun rose, but few yet knew the full extent of what the day would bring. The first reports were just coming in. Crouch was dead. Moody and Scrimgeour were unaccounted for. Li was cursing up a storm.

Bones tapped on the podium with a dark rod. There was, for a moment, silence in the Wizengamot. She began slowly. "Rumors have reached us that the dark lord has returned. Not as a dark lord may return from a device, as we have seen before, but has returned at once in full power. Today I see little reason to doubt them."

Cornelous Fudge spoke. "But I do. In all our years, and in all the annals of our history there is record of no such thing. The interdict of Merlin forbids it."

There was a murmur that spread through the hall.

"But I do not", Amelia Bones continued. "Witches and wizards, we have sought in vain for a way to bypass the interdict, and so we think there is no way. But it is a good guess that a way remains to be found. Either way, Voldermort is upon us. Come there is little time. But I to not mean to leave you without hope. I heard from Moody last night that the dark lord is missing his wand hand. But where Moody is now I cannot say." That at least was not a lie. If she knew what Moody was up to she would have forbidden it. "I do not know what manner of power was responsible, but the dark lord can yet be stopped. Let us stop him."

Lucius Malfoy spoke with a haggard voice. "You jest. No one has laid a spell on the dark lord. These things do not happen. But come, how is this to be believed. All we have are rumors. We have no ... evidence." Lucius Malfoy was not accustomed to arguing in such terms, but he had paid attention to Draco enough to learn what he was talking about. One more clever ploy to gain time.

"Enough!" roared Auror Li. "I can read intentions from a word or a hesitation. The dark lord is upon us and Mr. Malfoy knows it. I must ask for aid, all we can possibly give. No call for a draft this time. I call for arms. Every able bodied wizard or witch. Now is not the time to consider who must fight for the rest of us, for this is not a mere threat of war but of obliteration of our nation. Nothing less will serve."

Lucius wavered, but he recovered before Li finished speaking. "Li's proposition is madness. Shall we put down this madness as it belongs and relieve Li from his position. I call for an immediate vote."

There was a show of hands great enough to see there was no need to bother counting them. Amelia Bones spoke. "Vote or no vote, I'll not do it."

Fudge spoke, his mouth dripping with sarcasm. "What is this? You would overturn a vote of the Wizengamot. For a vote as lopsided as this such a thing is not done."

"This is the end. The last session of the Wizengamot is adjourned. I do not look to this body being drawn together ever again." Bones tapped the podium once and walked away. Li swiftly followed.

* * *

Minerva moved her wand and dismissed the bubble-head charm so she could make her answer heard. As she was not yet accustomed to a zero gee environment, that first motion sent ther tumbling. No sooner than she opened her mouth, she smacked her head on the wall. She re-oriented herself and tried again. "My name is Minerva, and please keep it off the radio. I really don't want trouble following me. Some really bad people are out to get me. It was said they would hunt me to the ends of the earth." As she tumbled round again, she finally noticed the grab bars and was able to stop her rotation.

There was no shuttle at the international space station at this time, and there was only one astronaut with the three cosmonauts. Minerva had managed to find the one astronaut. It did not, however, take very long for one of the cosmonauts to overhear, and radio home with the disturbing news. This was, however, answered with "We don't have time for jokes."

But nobody was joking. The astronaut was really quite put off by the incomprehensibility of what was before him. It sounded like somebody was fleeing the mob, and managed to get up here by some hodge-podge method. But that was preposterous. If someone can get up here why do they fear the mob. The power differences are just too great. Whoever can get here ought to be able to deal with any threat the mob can produce. It must be a great opponent indeed. "What's this? Someone who can get to the space station at considerable risk is deathly afraid. It took some effort indeed to get here. What is it that you fear so much?"

Minerva decided that total truth was dumb, but she wasn't that good of a liar. "I ran away. War has come upon us and I needed somewhere to flee to. I haven't a clue what I'm doing."

"Well I can see that. Who sent you and how did you get here?"

"I followed a long sheet of numbers. Here, see what Michael figured for me. I reall am in a lot of trouble and need a safe place to stay."

You don't become an astronaut without a lot of training, and burn timing sheets start to look familiar after awhile. "Seriously. By hand. Lady, to my knowledge nobody has figured an intercept by hand." And gotten it right with the utter impossibility of any course correction, at least. Had she not come within sight of the space station things would have gone badly.

"Would you rather I say I popped in out of thick air?"

"Nah. I'd rather you say who you really are and why you're really here and why you want it off the radio."

"Let's start with the last one. If you call home and say I am here, either they will think you're lying or they make too much chatter on it and the man who is looking for me will bring war here. I am here because he won't think to look here and probably can't figure out how to get here even if he does. And if you don't believe who I am there's not much point me trying to explain."

"All right Minerva who ARE you?"

"I am Minerva, a schoolteacher by trade. The darkness that was struck down has returned with vengeance and new terror. One man will soon conqueror. We ask little. Are you willing to shelter us for a little time?"

"You keep on going on about a war I am not aware of. Water costs ten thousand dollars a glass up here. This is no small thing you ask."

"Bring me an empty glass." A flexible bottle was swiftly produced. "Aguamenti. Water doesn't cost anything anymore. And we've worked out a way to bring up other supplies. We need nothing but room."

He looked at the full bottle and said "Huh."

"Now", Minerva said, "would you mind conducting me to the center of this space station so we can start sending up supplies?"

"What are you actually looking for?"

"Michael said the center, and said to be careful about being right at it because the hill sphere is only two meters wide. I don't quite know what that means and I'm not sure I want to know why it needs to be the center right now. I've heard enough things I don't really understand today."

"Lady, so have I. So have I."


	6. Chapter 119: Form Up

CHAPTER 119: Form Up

It did not take long for Minerva to set up the first portkey on the space station. It took even less time to get everybody up there. Of course not being in immediate danger leaves plenty of time to think.

Saying their long-term position wasn't good was an understatement.

Having their primary defense being based on the dark lord not being able to figure out where they were or how to get there was less than ideal. Had any of them known the dark lord had talked about the Pioneer plaque would have unnerved them. Imperiating himself onto a shuttle flight wasn't out of the question. Checking all incoming shuttles would be tedious. Alastor was seriously considering suspending them just to keep word from getting out; but that in itself might get the word out. Or maybe not.

In any case there were a few things to do, but first a curiosity. He retrieved the elder wand from his robes and released it. The wand promptly floated over to Professor Michael Evans-Verres, who grabbed it. "Mmm hmm, I thought so."

Minerva said "What happened there?"

"The dark lord defeated Dumbledore. He defeated the dark lord, not vanquished completely, but defeated enough that the wand has switched alliegence to him."

"He can't even use a wand."

"Perhaps not. Or perhaps this will prove vital. In any case, he should be able to brew potions with it. Not that I'd try brewing here. Anyway, time for you to get out the books and see if you can find the secret to Harry's transfiguration. I have a lot more than a hunch that will prove vital."

Housekeeping was going to get interesting. There weren't spare bedclosets for all of them, so some of them had to sleep in the storage units, where the places where stuff was already unloaded from would have empty tiedowns. Light sleeping bags could be had, but that meant hauling more stuff up, with more stuff floating around. All of the smaller items went into pouches, but floating pouches were just as bad and they really weren't designed to be tied down.

* * *

Hermoine was getting worried. Where was Harry? Where was Professor McGonagall for that matter? Flitwick was in a tizzy and she could tell something had gone horribly wrong. She started going through the pouch. It didn't take long to discover it was Harry's. The acetylene torch gave that away. Besides that, she found dynamite, a fifth-year potions textbook, a first-year potions textbook heavily marked up, a GPS receiver, several gallon bottles of sulfuric acid, blasting caps, a bag of loose black powder (shudder), before she stopped at the diary of Roger Bacon. The page shoved inside the book was ominous, and it seemed to be about her. Then realization caught up with her.

The librarian on duty that day was not happy. "I need a book on horcruxes" is not a normal request, and on asking at length and getting little more than "it has something to do with coming back from the dead" wasn't helping. Hermoine had, of course, the good sense to conceal what she had.

Not long after that, Moody's patronous found her. Ten minutes later she had repacked Harry's pouch, grabbed a few books and notes, and was on the space station. At least she didn't have to deal with Professor Flitwick finding out why she was asking about horcruxes.

Minerva McGonagall was repeatedly portkeying in and out with a chestful of supplies each time. Several oxygen bottles had been hauled up, quite a lot of food, a random grab-bag of textbooks, a lot of sheet metal, and quite a few brooms. She was a little bit grouchy because Michael Evans had insisted on getting the sheet metal and Alastor Moody had agreed and neither of them wanted to tell her why yet.

Hermoine had a good idea. "Why not use an air freshening charm and dispense with the oxygen bottles?" Moody felt silly and quickly set about doing just that. It took quite a few charms to cover the space station but it's not like they were in a hurry.

* * *

NASA was getting annoyed at the loss of communications with the ISS. Moscow, on the other hand, was furious. They had already discovered the cameras were disabled, but the telemetry told a crazy story. Oxygen consumption had gone way up but had now apparently dropped off to zero. Waste water generation was up, but fresh water consumption was down. Then they noticed the cooling water consumption was up. Despite having an unexpected amount of water in the tanks, this was unnerving. With so many instruments reporting crazy values, they had taken the conclusion that its most likely none of them were broken and the cosmonauts were up to something. The lesson of Apollo 13 had been driven home: multiple independent instrument failures do not happen; therefore it is wise to believe them. Even Moscow had managed to learn that one. The guess that the cosmonauts were up to something was right of course, but Moscow had no hope of guessing what was going on.

NASA, on the other hand had gotten something out of their astronaut. Not what they wanted to hear, but what they needed to hear most, that the space station was in good shape and in no need of supplies anytime soon. They also received that the astronaut had certain knowledge that a fringe uprising was taking place in Britain with some kind of power behind it, and the USA had better look into it.

This was, of course, very disturbing. The belief that the astronaut had gone mad appeared to make the most sense, but that didn't explain the nonsense telemetry. There just wasn't any to fake consuming zero oxygen.

All the diving purchases and oxygen bottles had attracted attention in London. The unprecedented demand had sold out all the bottles in half the stores before it went away again. Espionage wasn't required to learn about it as it made the news. After the previous priming, this got NASA's attention. This was, of course relayed shortly to President Bush. Not that he knew what to do either, but briefing him made sense, and if you're going to ask for an out-of-cycle shuttle launch you had better have a good reason.

* * *

Even bypassing the math, timeless physics is not the easiest thing for an old brain to learn. Michael hadn't been all that good at explaining it, but Hermoine did a better job. While Moody was trying partial transfiguration for the fifth time, Hermoine set down to studying the note labelled 42.

With Hermoine busy with Moody, this left Michael and Minerva going over the warp field equation. Minerva was getting worried. Transfiguring something high-energy was a bad idea. It finally dawned on her why Michael kept on insisting using partial transfiguration everywhere; you can set a new shape permanently by transfiguring the part you don't want to motor oil and allowing it to flow away before finiting it. Slowly the second piece of realization set in. Heavy motor oil evaporated too slowly to present any significant risk from inhaling bits of it, so long as the material it started as wasn't toxic. This meant the originals had to be of the right material; hence all the sheet metal. And if you were in zero gee and bothered to use a weak hovering charm to get the oil to take on a new shape wonderful things were possible.


	7. Chapter 120: Prophecy

CHAPTER 120: Prophecy

Act 2:

"Hermoine, pay attention."

Michael Evans-Verres was starting to get on her nerves. She was usually quite patient, but sometimes enough is enough. "I know. I get it! We have a prophecy and we cannot defeat the dark lord. But even witches cannot make fictional things by willing them into existence."

Alastor Moody had managed to cast his first partial trans- figuration after two days. Minerva was currently portkeying back and forth hauling up a trunk of sheet metal or plastic or silicon each time.

Act 1:

"The ward we encountered the first time," Michael askex, what exactly does it do?"

Alastor answered, "It prevents backwards time effects in the region, so that we could not enter it once having used our time turners."

"Mmmm, I don't think that's quite right." This is advanced physics. If all backwards time travel effects were cancelled, some of the Feynman diagrams for the strong force would be cancelled, which in turn weaken the strong force coupling constant, with catastraphic results. "Are you sure it doesn't act on time-turned individuals rather than anything that travels backwards in time?"

"Without a time turner how would you-Oh, you know a way already and so does Harry. Something to do with vulcan." There was, of course, only one choice. The wards used by dark wizards did not defend against time traveling attackers-they defended against timed-turned attackers, and evading them was as simple as having not used a time turner recently. Michael Evans- Verres had spotted the flaw almost immediately. If all you have is a time turner the defense works very well. If on the other hand you are willing to do it the hard way not so much.

The hard way was building a time machine that operated by ordinary physical laws, but Michael Evans-Verres already knew how to do that, as would anybody who read enough hard science fiction. It was a simple matter of piloting a starship into a black hole big enough to permit access to the inside of the event horizon before the tidal forces ripped it apart.

Petuna Evans-Verres was sent to go ask the astronaut if he would be willing to assist in the construction and navigation of a starship. The astronaut didn't need much convincing. The cosmonauts on the other hand were not willing to help out. It was finally necessary to radio down to Moscow to explain that yes there are extra astronauts on the space station and yes there is stuff going on not being discussed and yes the work was being disrupted and yes the cosmonauts would return to their scientific work soon.

On the other hand NASA was buzzing like a disturbed beehive already.

Act 3:

"Hermoine, I know we've been confined up here too long and are getting short tempered", Minerva began. "I'll see if I can manage it. There's a big difference between something fictional that you have no idea what it might look like and something you have a diagram for." This was not new information: she and Harry had worked this out long ago, but it was comforting anyway.

Minerva stretched forth her wand, and the steel and silicon and plastic and lithium turned into oils and flowed together into one incomprehensible whole, then came the finite and it turned into chunky blobs again. Another failure same as before.

"Michael, isn't there a way we can do this one material at a time?"

"Sadly, no. There isn't." He was holding back the part about the plans not being really detailed enough to build a warp core; they were more like the first grade level cutaway "how it works" diagrams. That's all it took to transfigure anything else so why not; just so long as they believed it was good enough it tended to work. But if someone tried it one layer at a time, the deficiencies stacked on top of each other would result in a device that doesn't work. If the one trying to cast the transfiguration ever realized this, they'd never be able to put that idea away and trick the source of magic to allow this to happen. But as transfiguring a desk into a pig worked, so would this.

Alastor Moody took another look and said "Partial transfiguration. It has to be partial transfiguration." Minerva just looked sheepish.

Alastor looked intently upon the diagrams and stretched forth his wand and began. Slowly, much slower than last time, each material turned into oil and flowed and melded together and took on startling complexity and cast twisted shadows on the walls and then slowly the shadows took fixed shapes as each piece in turn achieved its target shape and solidified. As the transfiguration progressed the shadows cast took on a more blocky shape until there was just the shape of the outer casing to be seen. Long minutes after the changing had ceased he finited it and absolutely nothing happened.

Then he inserted his wand into each of the four access points and cast the same unbreakable charm on each one. This was the key. The capacitors used to generate the negative field should break down from overvoltage long before building up enough negative energy to outweigh even the dielectric within the capacitors. But the unbreakable charm would prevent the overvoltage failures and allow the negative energy buildup required to bend space outwards.

* * *

Auror Mike Li and Amelia Bones stood upon the top of Azkaban. Two days. That was all it took for Magical Britain to fall. Azkaban, once and still a prison, was now the last fortress and refugees were fleeing to it. They believed the dark lord dared not approach. While none of his death eaters could cast patronous they were right of course, but a few of them recalled Salazar Slytherin could cast patronous.

The sun was rising, and dawn is ever the hope of man. The concentration of patronouses in the top level was now so great that the dementors could not reach the roof very well and hope remained.

Emmiline Vance joined Li on the roof. "With each day brings new hope" she spoke, misquoting something she had long forgotten the source of.

All of a sudden Moody's patronous appeared before her and asked "Does Gringotts stand?" to which she answered "No, Gringotts has fallen."

She turned to Li and said "Mad-Eye is still with us."

"That is good news. Let us take heart that we shall yet overcome."

Amelia Bones frowned and then seemed to look far off. "His might is not enough, and his paranoia has gone through the roof. But I cannot help but wonder, where is he and what hope did he seem to place in that muggle. Alas for the mighty, his mind seems to be on the verge of breaking down."

"Michael,", Alastor began, "are you now willing to believe that our cause is desperate? When the stock of gold I have with me is gone I shall not be able to obtain more. As for your money and your credit, I don't know how long it will hold out."

"Not this again. We're almost through."

"Hermoine", Michael said, "why is it that wizards believe muggles have no souls."

"Because muggles leave no ghosts. But that's not important because ghosts are just afterimages left behind of a wizard's magic."

Michael took a long breath and began slowly, patiently. "We scrabble in the darkness for knowledge having not the light. But we know the human soul exists. Long ago we did an experiment. The less fluorescent gas in the tube, the less current can be made to flow through it, up to a certain point. But beyond that point, almost at a vacuum, the electrons tear free of the fluorescent gas and travel across the tube, and the current goes way up and they strike the far end and it turns bright green. So it is with souls. So long as the brain is working the soul is constrained to the brain. Patients under deep anesthesia with no brain activity have reported what was going on around them in the operating room. I recall a case where the patient recognized a doctor whom she had never had a chance to see before and was operating on her knee during heart surgery. She asked why. The answer of course was to obtain a blood vessel to replace one in the heart with. But the important thing is she somehow knew who specifically to ask.

"Those born blind can yet see during near death experiences. That ought to be impossible. Even if the eyes were restored to working in an instant the brain cannot see, but such patients report details and even colors.

"Humans have souls. Don't ever forget that."

AN: I did not make up Michael's ideas or knowledge about souls.


	8. Chapter 121: Construction

CHAPTER 121: Construction

The ISS orbited the earth at the fantastic rate of once every ninety minutes. Alternating periods of fifty minutes of daylight and forty minutes of darkness did not do well for one's time-of-day estimation. By this point they had thoroughly lost any semblance of normal sleep schedules.

With the detailed work over, the great work could now begin. With only Alastor Moody able to reliably cast partial transfiguration, the whole load would by necessity fall upon him. On paper it looked simple enough. The steel sheets were to be cut by partial transfiguration of a thin strip of steel into motor oil, separated, and the strip finited to prevent anything stupid from happening. Once separated, the pieces were to be assembled according to the plan into the hull of the spaceship. This was done by partially transfiguring the edges of the strips to be joined into motor oil, pressing them together, and finiting the oil between them. The result was as good of a weld as could be done on earth, and required less equipment and less hazard.

On the other hand, this meant long spacewalks for Alastor Moody. Actually cutting and gluing, even by magic, in zero gee outside the space station was tricky business. Noting they dared not use a broom for propulsion meant Moody had to do it the old fashioned way like astronauts before the MMU was invented. Nobody had found a way to replenish an MMU by magic nor by mundane methods that wouldn't attract a lot of attention. Minerva McGonagall hadn't even bothering checking the charms table for hydrazine and there was no way anybody was going to try to free transfigure that.

Hermoine watched out the copula as Alastor assembled their starship. Petuna hung by her, transfixed by the mere sight of the earth circling below. All this time and she still hadn't gotten used to it. At least someone had the virtue of wonder. Minerva was there, but more to keep an eye on Hermoine than any particular interest on Alastor's progress. Time passed slowly, but progress was being made. What first looked like a piece of metal at the end of the space station's arm now looked like half a cylinder that had been beat on with a hammer until it was all angular. While Alastor Moody was constructing it in a particular order, that order was neither inside-out nor outside-in. A few bits of the rather Spartan interior, or rather the mounting points thereof, were visible as he put it together.

Time passed slowly. The work wasn't really exhausting but there's only so long someone can spacewalk, bubble-head charm or not. It was eventually determined that Minerva would have to accompany the rest of them on departing earth as there simply was no other way that navigation was going to work out besides pairing her with the astronaut. As powerful a wizard Alastor Moody was, his Arithmancy wasn't up to snuff and one mistake here could prove fatal. Warp drive or not, it is well-advised to treat black holes extremely seriously.

* * *

When Alastor Moody came to the windows he discovered that Michael Evans-Verres had forgotten something. While they could get high quality glass into any shape they wanted by partial-transfiguring sand into steel of the appropriate shape, and crystferrum on the resulting steel, they could not place the anti-reflection coating without having some to start with. So after placing the windows it became necessary to make one more trip to the surface after all. While he and Mad-Eye were on the surface, Minerva agreed to install the amenities and the warp core onto their now almost functional spaceship.

As soon as they portkeyed down Alastor Moody knew something was wrong. His habit of apparating two seconds after portkeying permitted him to instead discover he'd portkeyed into the middle of an anti-apparition ward. Between the non-descript warehouses was a good place for not being noticed at night, but a really bad place for an ambush if somebody ever figured it out.

It didn't take that long to spot the first death eater in the window high above them. "Stupefy." It was difficult to tell if that was a hit or if the death eater just jumped down but there wasn't time to consider it, nor time to look through the layers to see what was behind the wall. Three of them had been lying in wait around the corner. It just so happened it was behind Mad-Eye but to the Eye of Vance that is no problem. He pirouetted out of the way of a hail of stunbolts sent down the narrow alleyway. While he was momentarily busy they closed a considerable fraction of the distance until he sent his first stunbolt at them. They all jumped aside and quickly put up Protegos. Two of them were obviously working on adding more layers of shielding while another sent a stunbolt at Moody. "Lagann. Stupefy." A single-layer shield is of no use against Moody. The death eater jumped out of the way just in time.

Then the other two approached. "Stupefy." "Jellyfy." The second move was rather clever against Alastor. While easy to block if you had a shield, Moody never used shields, and he was starting to get old. The athleticism required to sustain a fight for long was not quite there anymore. On the other hand, getting on his nerves is not particularly good for one's longevity. "Avada Kedavra." One of them jumped out of the way, another sent three gold bolts and a third sent a green bolt. A prismatic sphere sent one of the gold bolts back where it came from and the other two into the walls.

Another Death Eater was now approaching from the opposite side under not less than three distinct layers of shielding. The outer blue haze wrapped a purplish layer, than an inner red layer. Of his visage nothing could be seen. To Michael (who had wisely pressed himself against a wall until that point) it appeared that Alastor had his hands full with the fireworks show and couldn't deal with yet another. Having no suitable weapon he pulled the Elder Wand from his pocket. "Begone, or I'll blow you apart!"

"Drop it. I don't see what Mad-Eye sees in you, muggle, but you can't contend with me. You're not even holding it right."

Michael took a step closer. "I took off the dark lord's hand. How much more shall I do to you if you do not withdraw."

"Stupefy."

The Elder Wand moved of its own and caught the stunbolt. Quick as lightning Michael Evans-Verres returned it to its sender. The Death Eater hadn't quite been paying attention, hadn't changed his shield harmonics, and the stunbolt went right through all of them. He was just quick enough on his feet to dodge it, his skin buzzing where it blew past him. "Stupefy." Again it came back at him. This time he had swapped his harmonics and it bounced off into the wall. They were getting rather close now. "Avada Kedavra." But Michael jumped right into the wall, high-kicked off the wall at the Death Eater, bringing the Elder Wand down on his shields right as he made contact. The shields gave way. Michael dropped the wand and brought his fists up even as he came down. On the rebound he delivered an uppercut to the death eater which knocked him off balance and sent his last stunbolt wild. The Death Eater was too stubborn to drop his wand and brawl and Michael was too mad to be stopped. A few blows to the stomach and the Death Eater was down.

AN: I know full well most MMUs use nitrogen. 10 m/s of delta V per spacewalk isn't going to cut it.


	9. Chapter 122: Fire

CHAPTER 122: Fire

"Well done. And please pick up the Elder Wand."

Michael hadn't expected Alastor to speak so soon. "What happened?"

"After the killing curse from this one got one of the others, the remaining two decided to cut their losses and get out."

And Alastor Moody looked into the eyes and mind of Michael Evans-Verres and saw light and fury undampened, far more than enough to call a phoenix in any wizard. He then said to his pouch "Pepper up." "Here, drink this, then hold the Elder Wand like this." It was a gamble whether or not this would work. Far above they saw an orange star neither of them had noticed before. It brightened into an orange fireball as it descended upon them and there was a phoenix. And the phoenix said to Michael "Come!" but Michael could not understand and heard only "Caw!". Yet he reached up to grab hold having only the vaguest guess what was going on.

Alastor Moody was expecting to have to explain it, but when the phoenix was within reach Michael reached so fast Alastor barely had time to grab hold, and they were on fire.

The phoenix took them to the graveyard where Harry Potter had once stood and faced the Dark Lord. This time they were days too late. The phoenix cried out mournfully and seemed for a moment to want to leave, but Michael spoke "Phoenix, I will indeed come to this place and face the Dark Lord and pull my son from death, but I must go my way. See, we are already too late, yet not too late. Will you come with me?"

"Caw!"

At once they were on fire. The fire let out inside inside an optics shop in London. There was no trouble at all getting the shop-owner's attention. Indeed there was trouble calming her down instead. As soon as her voice was at a reasonable volume Michael reached into his left pocket and pulled out a handful of ten bob notes. "We need a bottle of anti-reflective coating immediately."

"I'm sorry, sir. We don't sell that stuff to just anyone."

Alastor Moody had had enough. He reached into a robe pocket and pulled out a Galleon. "This is pure gold. An entire ounce for a bottle. I doubt it costs you half that, but as you can see we are in an incredible hurry."

"All right mister you got yourself a deal."

Not three minutes after that they were back on the space station with their bottle of anti-glare coating. Michael had given a slightly wrong name, but most people will bother to figure out what you mean for enough gold.

* * *

The installation of the anti-glare coating on the inside of the windows was the simple process of letting some out of the bottle, transfiguring it into light vegetable oil, hovering it against the window, letting it flow, and finiting it back into the coating it is. Well, simple compared to what they had done so far. Even Minerva wasn't underestimating transfiguration's ability anymore.

Then the process had to be repeated on the outside. That took a good deal longer. It was at this point difficult to say whether Michael or the phoenix was more restless to get started. The phoenix did not count this as having been won yet, yet knowing the limits of its judgment had seen fit to withhold it until it could learn what Michael had seen worthy to risk his life to do. The phoenix song cured pepper-up backlash just fine so he was alert and ready for the action that wasn't ready yet.

On receiving a signal for Mad-Eye, Minerva gathered up Hermoine and the astronaut. Before leaving Petuna Evans-Verres, she handed her a portkey and said "I am sorry, but you cannot come with us. I leave you here in the safest of places, but if the worst should happen, this will take you into a long- disused warehouse in Edinburgh." Then there was a pop and that was that.

"Gleep?" Hermoine reacted to the phoenix first.

"Seriously," Minerva began, "I don't know what is going on here-

Pop, and Alastor Moody was back inside with them.

"nor what inclines a phoenix to pick a muggle-

"Light and fury and pepper-up" Alastor cut in.

"Let's go!" Michael said.

Minerva sighed, pointed her wand at the mounting point on the floor, and said "Alohomara." There was a jerk and they were loose, slowly tumbling. Hermoine put her hand on one of the brooms and the tumbling stopped. The task of star-hunting went fairly quickly, but Sagittarious was behind the Earth so they had a few minutes wait.

The astronaut took his seat with the pair of sticks providing the full twelve degrees of freedom required for the human mind to be able to handle spaceflight. Michael had insisted on a set of cold gas thrusters for contingencies. They lacked any computer so the sticks wired directly from a car battery to the release valves on compressed oxygen tanks. Nitrogen would have been less risky, but they had spare oxygen bottles.

"That muggle", Alastor continued from earlier, "stared down a Death Eater without any apparent way of defending himself. I don't think he knew the device he held would catch bolts either. And that was before the phoenix came to him." Speaking like this would theoretically prevent a certain person from gaining too much knowledge if he hadn't been listening to it for days already. But some people continue futile tasks.

"That's the most Gryffindor thing I've heard in a long time."

Sagittarious was coming up over the horizon, but the ISS was in the way. "Starboard thrusters." Michael was rather too alert, but the phoenix was obviously to blame for that one.

Then Alastor Moody took a steel plug, put one end against the warp core, and applied his wand. And there was a quiet hum and by and by the stars gathered together in front of them and grew dim. An unforseen difficulty. As they got closer they would have to stop from time to time to get their bearings. Minerva McGonagall wavered, but Alastor said "Take heart, for I know how we shall be shown our way back."

On the second day, Minerva got out the bezors and passed them around to everyone. Hermoine didn't need one, but Minerva didn't know that. Slowly the forward facing window became bright as they approached the core of the Milky Way. Still they pressed on, being surprisingly sure of their range for using a wristwatch for timing and very little to steer by.

* * *

NASA HQ in Houston had just received a call from Kamikoa in Japan and things were buzzing. Seems they had for the third time in a week tracked a neutrino source across the sky. Ok, the most likely explanation for once is a fluke, but twice starts to sound like a real thing, and this was the third time. They had withheld even then. The director prepared to brief the president again on some nonsense. Some of the engineers thought they had worked out what it had to be, but that was preposterous. On the other hand, maybe now was the time to take another look at the 1980 warp drive equation and see what could be predicted to be observed if somebody was operating one.


	10. Chapter 123: Hole

CHAPTER 123: Hole

Two days had been enough to work out their trajectory within the black hole, subject to only minor correction given its observed diameter. It would take longer though to work exactly how far away they were and therefore its diameter, but that couldn't really be helped. A smaller black hole would simply be too dangerous to try this.

It was bright inside the starship. They had neglected covers for the windows, and had overlooked the density of stars near the center of the Milky Way. There were thousands of them that outshown Venus on a good night, and tens of thousands that outshown Jupiter. The phoenix's fire was outshown by the light pouring in through the windows, which in a way was a good thing as they were looking out the windows looking for the black hole in the center of the galaxy.

"There, you see it? That distortion?" Michael had spotted the galactic black hole first. It was about a fifty-fifty chance between him and the astronaut anyway as none of the others had any idea what the thing they were looking for would look like.

Then again, maybe Hermoine would have, but she was spending all her time looking out the window in awe with none left to actually look for anything in particular. The same Hermione who watched the starship be constructed rather than the earth was too busy looking out the window in awe to spot what she was supposed to be looking for.

It didn't take long at warp to get really close.

They took a "parabolic" trajectory diving down into the black hole with a sixty degrees "north" (relative to which side was up from their ship) approach to avoid both the accretion disk and the relativistic jets. As they crossed the horizon Michael noted the time on his watch and Minerva rotated the ship to point nose out. The seconds passed exceedingly slowly. Nobody spoke. They all knew the timing had to be right within a second or they would arrive at earth at the wrong time or not at all. The joints creaked from the strain caused by the tidal forces, but they held. Hermoine seemed to be tensing up. In fact they all were, but it was most noticeable in her. Finally Michael said "Now" and Alastor Moody immediately applied his wand and they began to climb slowly out of the black hole.

It should have been met with greater fanfare. Defying time and making a mockery of physics and astronomy should have been met with something other than nothing at all. In fact they all knew their defiance of physics had began two days ago when they departed earth and left its light behind them. But now their defiance was complete, for they were in their own past light cone. Casuality was now looped. First order logic had given way to second order logic. Yet everything appeared the same.

"Now," Minerva McGonagall said, "Mad-Eye, you said you knew how to get back from here. I've got to see how this works. I might regret it afterwords but let's see this magic, and I really hope it isn't one of Harry's tricks again."

"Expecto Patronum." Moonlight riveled the sunlight of the phoenix. "Patronous, do you know the patronous of Emmiline Vance? When it appears again lead us that way." This was in fact an incredibly stupid trick, one of those things you would think really shouldn't work at all. In fact his patronous could not possibly perceive that of Emmiline Vance because it did not yet exist within the past light cone of their present location, but somehow it knew from past experience where her patronous would be well enough to follow the directive it had been given anyway. His patronous moved to the front of the ship and a little to the left side and down. Minerva rotated the ship to line up, and they were off again.

Two days and two more rounds of bezors later they were approaching Earth. At this time Minerva sat watching a Quiddich match at the same time she sat in the now comfortable zero gee looking down on the blue marble in renewed wonder. Hope and awe filled her, for the world was beautiful and they were going to save it.

"Now remember, we must be very careful", Alastor spoke. "We cannot communicate with each other by patronous as they will go to our other selves and cause paradoxes. The "protections" offered by the the time turners are not in effect. I have a portkey to Hogsmede that will take us within range, and someone needs to stay here with the ship."

Michael knew what that meant. The time turners had some elementry protections built-in to them; if the plan of action would irreversably cause a paradox at object-level, time travel would be blocked. On the other hand, physics knew nothing of object level. If there was no paradox at billiard-ball level but catastraphic destruction at object-level it would be allowed.

"Begging your pardon," Hermoine Replied, "but I can receive a patronous for the next hour or so. I'm still dead remember?"

"Good, you're staying. If we don't answer use your emergency portkey to get yourself and the astronaut to safety."

Before Alastor Moody could use his portkey there was fire. Too fast, Minerva had not come with them. They stood, not at Hogsmede but in a grassy field, not too far from a small scattered graveyard. The sky was darkening rather alarmingly far for this time of year. Michael checked his watch, then realized that oops it's not on anything like local time. More fire. They were across from the clock tower. Michael synchronized his watch to London time and then there was yet more fire. The phoenix seemed inexhaustable.

Michael had a brilliant idea. "Alastor Moody, can you hit me and this phoenix with dissolution? I suspect the Dark Lord has a way of detecting approaching wizards but I'm no wizard and he should miss me, and if none of the others can spot me I can get really close."

"Phoenix, pay attention. You are going to sit on my shoulder and I am going to walk in there under cover of night and dissolution right up to my son, and when we get there you are to take us out of there. We are prevented by paradox from succeeding by direct attack, but there is no reason we cannot get my son out now and deal with them later. I must stand and wait, for once Hermoine is raised from the dead and my son sends a message calling for help I may act but not before. But no later than he sends that message we shall act upon it and save him."

"Caw?" Phoenixes didn't understand delay, nor paradoxes, but the boldness in his mind was akin to the fury of battle and the plan seemed to it more daring than a direct assault. While its selection showed neither fear nor evil nor delay it would not turn back from the task that its selection had called it for, and when it had succeeded the phoenix would make its selection its master. And this phoenix had already learned that delay was sometimes necessary.

Alastor Moody spoke. "Be careful, dissolution isn't anywhere near infallible against Voldermort. There's a cloak in Harry's pouch if he hasn't gotten to it himself yet. It will hide you better if you can get it. Dissolution. Quietus. Silenco."

Alastor Moody was being typically paranoid.

* * *

Three figures approached a graveyard of scattered graves. Two of them approached together, and one of them held a wand. They proceeded to the center of the graveyard. The third approached alone, unmarked by either of the other two approached only part way into the graves and hid behind a tombstone.

From there he heard muffled sounds through the garbling effect of sounds coming into a quietus cast specifically to keep sounds from coming out. Sometimes he could understand the words, and the words were omnious.

"... shall raise my own ..." "Fal. Tor. Pan." Michael choked at that one. "Death..." "Expecto PATRONUM!" Michael looked up at that and moved closer only to change his mind when he saw the troll appear. The phoenix wavered. "Not time. My watch says there's forty minutes left before the message is sent."

"... stay well back, this ritual is darker than the last ..." Gunshots "That was absolutely predictable..." A large number of pops. Michael knew the sound and what it meant and didn't bother to count. He didn't really want to know.

Then he saw opportunity. They all were minding Harry, and none of them were minding the altar where Hermoine lay nor the pouch beside it, nor all the junk piled up either. He helped himself to the True Cloak of Invisibility and put it on.

"Crucio" screaming "... Avada Kedavra! Avada Kedavra!"

"... Useless the lot of you ..."

Michael began walking. Unfortunately the death eaters had set up largely between him and his son so he had to walk the long way around.

"... Recast ..." "...Stun him..."

Michael broke into a run. He saw Harry Potter go down and dived upon him, and there was fire. Lord Voldermort saw Harry Potter enveloped in a brilliant glow and disappear right before his eyes.

AN: If there were no phoenix for Michael, they would have used a portkey. This is a valid solution to the final exam by cavalry coming over the hill caused by Harry.


	11. Chapter 124: Regroup

CHAPTER 124: Regroup

Phoenix fire lit up the starship. Michael Evans-Verres deposited the stunned Harry Potter there, wearing his cloak but with the hood off so that only his head could be seen, and left immediately. Minerva quickly cast Innervate to wake him up again. Teleport spam became Michael very much.

Hermoine spoke first, but let's just say that her words of "I'm glad that you are still among the living!" were not the best chosen. On the other hand, Harry's first words of "Where are we?" were not well reasoned either.

At that moment, there was more fire, and Michael returned with Alastor Moody.

Harry was thinking ahead and manage to out-paranoia Mad-Eye for once. He spoke softly, but with urgency behind it: "Let's get this thing up to high orbit before the Dark Lord figures out where we've gone. Then we figure out what to do. Not that I see the Dark Lord operating this even if he does find it."

Michal answered, "Harry, I'm ever so glad to have you back. I see that you were indeed in trouble beyond reckoning, and having seen how it was all laid out I can say you were right to send us away earlier. We have won through this far by wild chance and sacrificed much to do so. But the power to defeat the Dark Lord is not within me, though I blew his wand hand off."

"Father, Mr. Moody. He has the stone. He is learning science. We are in deeper trouble than you seem to know. He'll have that hand back before long, not that he needs it."

Alastor Moody cut in "What is the Philosopher's stone that it is such a great peril, and how shall he have his hand back?"

"Call it rather the stone of permanency. It sets transfigurations. Wait a minute? Where did you get this starship? It looks like you transfigured it but that can't be right." If you don't know what the stone does, you obviusly coudn't have used it for its intended purpose.

"I did, and you can thank your father for the secret. But I don't understand even now how a single word from you was enough for your father to draw a warp core and work out what elements go into it. He says it comes from a telly show, whatever that is."

"The Dark Lord cast a spell to return his spirit to his newly resurrected body. The words of that spell were Fal. Tor. Pan. That's straight up Vulcan right out of the movie. It doesn't even sound like any human language that ever existed."

Minerva spoke "Just what are we talking about here? I can't follow this one at all."

Michael Evans-Verres laughed full of mirth. "Three little words. That's all it took for the Dark Lord to plant the seed of his own undoing. The construction of magic defeats me altogether, but one of these must be true: either Vulcan exists for real or you can transfigure things that don't exist so long as you believe they do."

"Somehow Harry Potter has to have the power to vanquish the Dark Lord. We have a prophesy and prophesy cannot be broken no matter what else comes. Yet this doesn't quite seem to fit. To relay the message of the contents of a resurrection spell we could have looked up in the library is hardly the power to vanquish."

"Two words," Moody spoke, "and I wasn't sure what they even meant. What did you even hope for when you expressed your surprise at Vulcan?"

"Sheer incredulity. I was so surprised at the language being used for spellcasting that I could not but pass it on. I had nothing to hope for really but you might yet oppose the Dark Lord after me."

Hermoine spoke next. "I have your pouch, with most of the stuff still in it. I'm pretty sure the only reason there's no rule against dynamite on school grounds is thought of it yet. What were you thinking?"

"I was thinking it was a bad idea to transfigure explosives because you aren't supposed to transfigure things to be burned. Same for the acetylene torch. I am so glad to have you back. I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to risk my neck again. I'm the one who has to defeat the Dark Lord. We already know that."

"Son," Mr. Evans-Verres said, "for the next three days you're not going anywhere near the Dark Lord. We know we cannot defeat him. We traveled back in time to pick you up."

"Where did you get a time machine already?" Of course Harry Potter knows it can't be a time turner. Those don't reach back that far.

"Cosmic black hole. Navigation was a real pain though."

Hermoine spoke up. "I've been meaning to ask for some time. What does it mean horcrux?"

Alastor Moody made a face, then answered "The Dark Lord, as have some others before him, has made a horcrux that will enable him to cheat death in a fashion, and will enable his shade to take over a body of a weak spirit. We need to find his horcrux and destroy it when we finally do get him."

Harry Potter said "He has more than a hundred horcruxes including the Pioneer space probe and the resurrection stone."

Minerva McGonagall and Alastor Moody both cringed.

Mr. Evans-Verres spoke again. "The Dark Lord's next move is to attack the ministry, and that will happen in a few hours. We cannot win, but we can assist in the evacuation or thin down the ranks of death eaters, or both. I have in mind to arrive just in time to make a little mayhem."

Alastor Moody produced a letter, gave it to Harry Potter, and said, "Dumbledore left this letter for you in my keeping."

Before long Harry spoke again. "Dumbledore left me battle instructions mostly, but they're all worthless now. The Ministry was take by force, Hogwarts is lost, and the Elder Wand believes it is my father's to wield, but sadly he can't work magic at all. Draco and I tested this. Magic is a simply-inherited recessive trait."

"Hmm, this gives me an idea. Time to use truth to stir up confusion. Expecto Patronum. Tell Draco Malfoy 'I am about to tell your father the truth we discovered about blood.'"

Harry didn't even wait for a reply. "Expecto Patronum. Tell Lucius Malfoy 'Magic is a recessive trait. There is no such thing as a mudblood. A wizard is defined as a person who carries two copies of the Atlantis marker. This may be tested by asking enough paintings about the number of children born to a family of squibs and how many of them were wizards or witches. Lord Voldermort's true name is Tom Riddle and he himself is muggle-born. Look and see that my words are true."

The answer came back swiftly. "What manner of madness is this?"

Both Alastor Moody and Michael Evans-Verres were staring at him.


	12. Chapter 125: Fury

CHAPTER 125: Fury

Mr. Grim surveyed the entrance through his mask. He had another name, but his occlumentary barriers were strong and the only name he would own at this time was Mr. Grim. It was about an hour before dawn, and the Death Eaters were gathering outside the ministry in the shadows of the twilight. Those that had seats on the Wizengamot were already there, for an emergency meeting was in progress. The Dark Lord had said to be here, and so they were here. The time of their ascension was at hand and they knew it.

The sun rose and still they waited. The front door faced east, which hid them from site even as it rose. Not a one of them was foolish enough to permit himself to become backlit.

Someone behind him said it was time. He turned and looked and Lord Voldermort had crept up behind him. At once Mr. Grim's wand was in his hand and he set his face against the door of the ministry. The Death Eaters were well trained and advanced as one man. The door guardian saw them and went for his wand, but was brought down by a hailstorm of stunners before he got his wand level. The door, on the other hand was not so easily opened. An alhomara or three didn't unlock it. Voldermort displayed his typical lack of patience, but rather than chastise his death eaters he traced a rune with a wand, chanted Az-Reth, and unleashed fiendfyre. The door didn't stand, for only the stone of the Wizengamot could turn fiendfyre. The Death Eaters were amazed at this ready use of fiendfyre, like the blood sacrifice didn't matter. Which of course it didn't, but they didn't need to know that just yet.

Once inside they fanned out through the corridors intent on killing any aurors inside. This was probably not the best of strategies, but even if some were lost, the aurors would be kept busy dealing with them, and those not brought down with the killing curse would be recovered in short order. Lord Voldermort himself took a small company straight ahead towards the Wizengamot. His intent was easily guessed. Mr. Grim had gone down a passage to the right alone. It seemed like there wouldn't be much this way as it lead to the storerooms of the Department of Mysteries. In would seem that it should have been well-guarded, and against ordinary intruders it was, but not against an army coming through the front door. The wards of detection had been set off, but there was nobody to respond. They were all busy already.

Mr. Grim was a fool but not an utter fool. As soon as he was alone he cast Protego just in case a wizard around a blind corner got the first shot off at him. He was a certain match for any but a battle-hardened auror but one lucky shot would still be bad.

But around the corner was something he did not expect. A man, dressed not in robes, but in blue jeans and a polo shirt had made himself large in the passage way. In his right hand was what Mr. Grimm knew only vaguely to call a gonne and his left something small, and a phoenix was upon his shoulder and he was somehow afire but the fire did not consume him.

"Stupefy."

The man dodged it and with the same motion hurled the something in his left hand right at Mr. Grim. Mr. Grim dodged it. If he had known what it was he would have done something else. Taking more careful aim, he sent another stunbolt at the strange man. It too was dodged, and the man lifted his gonne with both hands.

Then his world was jolted. Mr. Grim was hurled towards the wall, his shield straining as it bounced him off it again and he was thrown forward and against the ground. His shield, not meant to be used like that, gave way, and he planted his face on the floor. He then drew forth all of his strength and all of his hatred, pointed his wand at his now much closer assailant, and nearly screamed "Avada Kedavra", but in the half second between the killing curse leaving his wand and reaching his fiery target his target wasn't there anymore but was on top of him instead.

Then there was a sound of thunder and Mr. Grim's story ended.

* * *

The outcome of the battle was pre-determined. The valiant efforts of the DMLE, Alastor Moody, and Michael Evans-Verres could not change that. The timeline in which the assault upon the ministry was turned was not the timeline in which Harry Potter was snatched from the grasp of Tom Riddle.

In the time it had taken to bring down the ward of Azkaban that prevented phoenixes from leaving, Mr. Evans-Verres had stopped two death eaters from entering the Department of Mysteries, and Alastor Moody had also been busy. Then messages were sent across the ministry to evacuate and the ways of escape were in the DMLE and the Department of Mysteries. Any who went to the DMLE escaped by the vanishing cabinet to Azkaban, and any who went to the Department of Mysteries escaped by phoenix to Azkaban. Yet it was not a clean escape for such a thing does not exist in the face of the enemy.

In the last emergency a young auror Albus Goldstein barred the door. The people escaping behind him could not run through the interlocks of the cabinet fast enough and so there was quite the crowd in the room of the DMLE with the cabinet to Azkaban. He saw coming down the hallway several Death Eaters with fiendfyre in front of them. He was already weary from fights in the hallways for he had met a death eater nearly his match. Both had exhausted their magics and it had come down to a knife fight in which he had barely prevailed and not without injury. He shut the door (thankfully it opened inward), drew forth his wand and cast prismatic wall. Already out of magic, he cast it with his life force and staggered to the floor. But the wall held. Fiendfyre burned through he door and slammed into it, and he screamed from the floor, but the wall still held. The thing of consuming fire appeared to claw at the wall and slide back and forth on it, for the will of its caster wavered in sheer astonishment. The last group of people escaping through the cabinet saw him still there on the floor when they shut the door to the cabinet from the inside. Even as they closed the door, the prismatic wall gave way to fiendfyre. It was only a matter of time, after all.

Lord Voldermort entered the Wizengamot with a fiendfyre phoenix appearing to sit upon his shoulder, bits of crimson dripping off it yet somehow not igniting his black robes. He found none there but his Death Eaters. His opponents had fought and lost in the halls. Many had escaped his grasp but he hardly cared at this point. He would rule Magical Britain and they would soon submit or die. He had the Wizengamot, the time turners from the Department of Mysteries, and the stone of permanency. Who could oppose him now?

* * *

On consideration he had to be more careful than that unless he wanted to rule over a world of ashes. The magical world would fall before him, but he in turn would fall before the muggle world, and he knew it. He knew what his Death Eaters never would, of the powers that were set against each other and their capacity to end all life on the surface of the earth.

But he didn't know that greater powers were set above him, far beyond his reach. He should have known. He hadn't heard the prophesy of the centaur but he had heard the prophesy of Trelawney.


	13. Chapter 126: Interlude

CHAPTER 126: Interlude

Dawn saw the train at Hogwarts waiting to collect students. What extra aurors could be gathered were massing here and at Platform 9 and 3/4 in case of an attack. Britain was already lost and they knew it, but the children would be protected and returned to their parents. This was likely a suboptimal choice but it was easy to coordinate. Portkeys to Azkaban were being quickly manufactured as it was already being converted into an emergency fortress, and unlike Hogwarts would not be a tempting target.

With fiendfyre being the death eaters primary weapon all of a sudden, even the hit wizards were afraid, and it was beginning to show. The counter for fiendfyre had not yet been found through the centuries but the fact of the sacrifice being negated was now obvious. Magic was, or so they thought, perfectly balanced, but something had slipped.

So when a death eater approached the train alone while all the students were being gathered into it there was great cause for alarm. Yet the greatest of the aurors urged a cautious approach. This did not look at all like an attack.

The death eater spoke first. "Stand aside and let me pass, for this day the Dark Lord has a message for the ears of Lestrath Lestrange that is worthy of Merlin. This is a parlay and not a battle and I invoke the ancient right of safe passage. Hear and observe, but at your peril for the words for him are double-edged and the receiver well-chosen for your benefit." In fact the death eater did not know that half of this was true.

The auror blinked. These were not the normal words from any death eater, and he could conceive of no message that was fit for the ears of a first-year student worthy of such a warning. Nevertheless, it was a bad idea to turn away a messenger of parlay. The dark lord was prone to rants but did not speak for no reason at all, and there could be no leverage upon this boy he could use to great effect.

So it was that the death eater was conducted to a car of the train where Lestrath Lastrange and Theodore Nott were. "Lestrath Lestrange, the Dark Lord bids you consider this. The patronous may be cast with the happy thought of the earth among the stars and the people within reaching outward to defy death itself. Such a patronous has the power within it to raise the dead and destroy dementors. The dark lord knows you want the power to destroy dementors. He has seen this cast with both effects with his own eyes and bids you learn it if possible. So great is the power and advantage to all wizards that he, even he, gives this knowledge freely though it be used against him. No mere occulmentry barriers will suffice. You must believe in your bones that death can be defeated."

That was unexpected. Yet the timing of things was far better for the light than the death eater had reason to fear. For as soon as he finished speaking a patronous taking the form of a human female appeared before them shining almost as bright as the sun. "Theodore Nott, this is Hermoine Granger. We have a starship and Harry Potter bids you to join us against the Dark Lord if you are willing." This quickly yielded a "Yes" answer.

The crowded train was ill-suited for private conversations. Somebody had overheard from the next cabin and it didn't take long for the rumors to get started. "Harry Potter is fighting the Dark Lord" is already something terrible to consider. And when they remember the rumor that Harry Potter can cause anything to happen by snapping his fingers they will consider the Dark Lord to be in trouble. The second rumor developed from the first was "Harry Potter has resurrected Hermoine Granger." This morphed into "Harry Potter will end death." The rumor "Harry Potter has a starship." spread slower until it reached the first muggleborn, then all the muggleborns found out so fast one would swear the rumor was being spread by a starship. On the other hand if a certain young woman by the name of Millicent was for some reason spreading the rumor this is what one would expect to find.

So it was with jubilation the train pulled up to platform 9 and 3/4 despite the certainty the Dark Lord had returned. And the implausible thing happened in that it was the kids telling the parents everything was going to be all right because Harry Potter was the hero and he was going to save them all. Again.

Severus Snape laughed long and loud and clear, despite his injuries. The Dark Lord would get his just desserts after all. Not by the cunning of Dumbledore, but by some wildcard out of nowhere. Hope unlooked for.

* * *

When the death eater had returned an hour after he delivered his message, he asked Lord Voldermort "What's a starship?" He saw Lord Voldermort appear to tremble for an instant before gaining control of himself and saying "Tell me everything."

The names the Dark Lord could count for that group ought to have given him no fear, but they gave him fear anyway. Alastor Moody. Minerva McGonagall. Michael Evans-Verres. Harry Potter. Hermoine Granger. And now Theodore Nott.

He had hoped that his triumph over the ministry would draw power to him to replace the numbers he lost. It had, but all the new volunteers would need to be trained all over again, and that would take some time. Not one competent wizard had joined. Of course it was those would seize any chance for power and not the ones already well off; he knew the effect, but he hadn't expected it quite this hard.

But the starship rightly gave him new pause. For only the second time he feared for the safety of his horcrux on escape trajectory out of the solar system.

* * *

Satosi Yamamoto was an intern at the neutrino observatory. This was the pride of Japan, for here they were first in all the world observing the core of the Sun, and had just added directional capacity that would permit them to monitor not just the sun but the whole sky all at once. 1987 had been an embarrassment. It would not be repeated. Next time, they'd be able to announce the supernova in advance and tell the astrononmers where to point their telescopes. Because of this, and because of his shift schedule, he was the first to see a wondrous thing. Somebody was using a warp drive. Of course nobody "sees" this live. They read off the detector data and plot it. But this was the second time only a few hours apart the same ridiculous signature had shown up in the output. Once, perhaps the instruments were acting up, and he'd checked them. Twice; same inclination with respect to an orbital plane and not synced with earth's rotation. That had to be real.

It took about six minutes of explaining the graphs to get to the point with his supervisor. "Somebody's gotta be using a warp drive" is just not a message that is going to be easy to believe. "Life is commonplace." is a thing most people believe to the point of expecting it on every star. But the experts know the equations. The Drake equation famously sets a really high probability of encountering another civilization, but when you replace L with 100 years (which is about how long it took for Earth to go effectively radio quiet again) you get 1 for the expected number of civilizations and then think something like "That must be us." More than that, there are about 50 different paramters for a planet being capable of supporting life, and most of them don't depend on each other. Even with really good odds for each one, the odds work out to be something more like less than one star per galaxy being capable of supporting photosynthetic life at all.

Of course his supervisor said "Let's see if that happens again."


	14. Chapter 127: Hogwarts

CHAPTER 127: Hogwarts

Communication with the starship was only possible by patronous. And for the moment only Harry Potter could receive patronous messages. And there weren't left many who could send them. This left them nearly deaf to communications.

So when a raven appeared to Harry Potter and said in the voice of Professor Flitwick: "Hogwarts is under attack." it was totally unexpected. They knew the day would come, but not that they would be told it would come. It didn't help matters much that they were yet time locked and could not stop Hogwarts from falling. So the reply was "Get out."

But opportunity would not be lost. Alastor Moody had a plan. By phoenix he was set down in the forbidden forest so that he could walk in unseen. The time of revealing the phoenix was not at hand. He could not win this battle, but he could assassinate a few death eaters and get out. Under heavy dissolution and time turned back a full six hours he walked up to the castle. Since Hogwarts was barred against apparation he chose to prevent all time turned attacks by the most expedient way. Noting time turned could interact with his future for a full hour, which was more time than he planned to stay on the ground.

Yet before the attack he sent Michael Evans-Verres down alone with a phoenix to scout out the points within the forest by which they would use to come in and out. Alastor Moody could easily use Legilimency to determine the exact locations so there was no need to complicate the matter. On trying one drop point, Michael Evans- Verres heard a noise and casually bent a branch out of the way to see what might be there. He didn't like what he saw and there was fire. The branch, still bent, stuck on some twigs for seemingly no reason at all.

Michael Evans-Verres and Alastor Moody chose to spin the time turner only after setting foot on the ground. The first five hours were in an abandoned warehouse in London and the last in the forbidden forest itself. This required some careful phoenix juggling but would expose the minimum attack surface. Alastor Moody would be exposed for a little more than six hours but Michael only a few minutes. After Alastor Moody started walking towards the castle Michael casually bent another branch before using his phoenix to move the few hundred feet to the pick-up point. If you have no magical defenses, not walking in the forbidden forest is a wise idea.

Yet dissolution was not infallible. A green bolt shot past him. The death eater's aim was a little off but it that range it wouldn't have mattered. Nobody could get the drop on Mad Eye Moody. He retreated into the forest where he would have the advantage. Some of the death eaters were new recruits and did not yet understand battle. Several of them proceeded to advance on the forest. The Eye of Vance was a terrible artifact and they did not know how to oppose it. Mad Eye spoke "Avada Kedavra" and sent death through the trees at the trailing death eater. From his perspective the bolt appeared to come out of the tree trunk right in front of him. The others didn't notice his fall.

It was no battle. It was a slaughter. But the alarms in the Hogwarts wards were set off, and the dark lord reacted. His first action was to turn his time turner once, and only then move to the forest. On spying his quarry he spoke "avada ked-" and was cut off when he tripped on a root and took a branch to the face.

If by time travel an attempt is made that would result in a paradox, the laws of physics step in and prevent the paradox. The dark lord was held at bay by a mundane law of physics by which the laws of magic were not written to set aside.

But the dark lord was no fool. He walked away from the battle and looped around, preparing to catch Alastor Moody on egress from the forest and out of the Hogwarts wards. His battle-hardened death eaters would be arriving shortly and they would beat the game from the forest for sure. Mad-Eye was apparently alone, and there were limits to what he could do. Yet for all his cunning he was foiled, for his attack window was but thirty seconds wide and he knew not that Michael waited with a phoenix to take him out again.

The next day Gringotts fell. Alastor Moody did not oppose this one.

It was tense in St. Mungo's. Death eaters had moved in, displacing the primary security, but the healers were allowed to go about their business. It was explained to them, "The Dark Lord actually likes your work. Do not trouble us and we will not trouble you."

* * *

It was thirty minutes before it was time for Keith Williams to brief president George Bush when the phone rang. "International call" he muttered to himself as he reached for the receiver. It would appear somebody managed to bypass the switchboard or something. It was going to be one of those days.

"What can a starship do?"

"This had better not be a crank call."

"A starship has been in high orbit for the past four days now. I would have presumed its yours but you obviously don't know about it."

"If you know a starship is in orbit you have better information than I do. What can you tell me?"

"Only that they are fugitives from justice. If I were you I'd presume they stole it."

"Who are you?"

Click.

Keith quickly dialed the switchboard. "Trace that last call to my phone. We have an incident."

It was worse. Keith Williams was going to have to brief the president on their being a starship in orbit and somebody on the ground knows it and wanted information out of him.


	15. Chapter 128: President

CHAPTER 128: President

"Mr. President, these facts are in order.

"Six days ago, Japan picked up a unique signal in their neutrino telescope. It occurred a second time a couple of hours later. They have spent the last few days checking their instruments. There is nothing wrong with them.

"On cross-checking with NORAD I found that a satellite appeared in low orbit about the same time. It's kind of a weird satellite but there's no doubt it's there. A few hours later it moved into high orbit. The timing of its move corresponds with the second signal. Infrared monitoring indicates that it is being rolled every few hours to provide even sun exposure. It is not continuously rotating but is rotated every few hours at a fast rate. If its using normal RCS, the fuel consumption required to do so is very high, like whoever built this thing neither has a budget, nor knows what they are doing.

"At the same time, somebody was buying up diving pressure suits in London. He didn't seem to want wetsuits or drysuits, but only pressure suits and tanks. It would appear he didn't want any helmets either but that doesn't sound right. Paid cash, and if the owner wasn't there, took the items and left cash on the floor.

"Five and a half days ago, Great Britain's ICBM early warning systems detected a missile in the boost phase over Great Britain tracking south-east as though launched into the correct orbital inclination to intercept the International Space Station. The instrument readouts appear to be wrong. It indicates nine stages were detected, with equal burn times, total energy output, and acceleration. At least one of those things cannot be correct.

"Approximately five days ago something happened on the space station. The occupants have turned off all the cameras and disabled the ground control and we have not been able to get useful information out of them. I have double-checked with Moscow, and they are furious. We should be prepared to extend asylum to the cosmonauts, but that is the least of our worries. The space station telemetry suggests that it has been resupplied by someone and currently has more occupants than expected.

"Our man did send one report claiming the space station is in no need of supplies anytime soon. Here I note he did not say it was resupplied, but only that it was not in need of supplies. He also reported there is some kind of fringe uprising in Great Britain that we should be looking into. I have made inquiry with the CIA and they have not yet responded with anything other then they are trying to get something on it. Somebody cold called me half an hour ago and tried to get some information out of me. Whoever it was knows that starship is there.

"At this time we know of no powers who can resupply the International Space Station but ourselves and the Russians. Neither have done so.

"A few hours ago Japan picked up the signal again. Mr. President, this signal can only be one possible thing: an antimatter power source, and given its rate tracking across the sky, it is certainly moving faster than light. NORAD indicates something detached from the space station yesterday, drifted for about half an orbit, then left in a straight line. This corresponds with the third signal.

"The data supports only one conclusion. There is a fringe group within Great Britain, and it is at war with itself, has obtained space launch capability, has some way of masking its existence on or near the ground, and does not regard us as a threat. We must now regard them as a potential threat because they have some way of obtaining large amounts of antimatter. We don't know who they are yet and they aren't interested in talking."

"Get me the astronaut" the president said.

A phone was produced. It took a few minutes to get the astronaut on the other end.

"I have received an extensive report involving someone unexpected with launch capability and an antimatter drive of some kind. Is there anything you would like to tell us?"

"I have the schematics for a warp drive and have seen it work."

"Find a way to get us copies on the ground."

"Yes, sir!"

"Thank you." Click.

"Mr. Williams, our man says he has schematics for a warp drive. In your opinion is this consistent with the evidence."

"It is, but it still doesn't make a ton of sense. In any case, I wouldn't pass up an opportunity to get schematics of a working warp drive either."

"If those schematics check out I'll have to write him a pardon for AWOL. Pull the CIA. See if you can find out anything about that fringe group. The last thing we want is the KGB getting there first."

* * *

Lord Voldermort was fuming mad and casting Crucio with the slightest provocation, so the death eater was trembling when he brought the news. "The CIA has been called down upon our heads. I don't think you wanted to fight all the world so soon."

But this Voldermort is not capricious. "Watch your bearing mister. But you are right, it is far too soon. We stick to the old rules. Obliviate is our best weapon as it was for the ministry before we arrived. Your saving grace is that it was Moody who leaked knowledge of us and not any of you."

Bellatrix Black had only now returned. With St. Mungo's in hand, getting her fitted with an artificial arm was an easy matter. It was time. Mad- Eye and his companions were going down. Harry Potter was the only wildcard, but they had faced off before and Harry lost.

"Lord Voldermort, I have something to add."

"Proceed Mr. Bronze."

"Mad-Eye Moody has recently gained the ability to sustain transfiguration permanently, or at least for days. That starship wasn't constructed, it was transfigured."

"Crucio." Three seconds later, "You can't transfigure something that does not exist. Everybody knows this."

"They don't have one. Nobody's got one. Nobody knows how. I've tried to get news of such a thing from the muggle world, everybody thinks its science fiction."

"You've got guts at least. Now go, and search again. I don't want to hear it until you've got an answer."

Bellatrix spoke. "I found some traces from the silly guards at the ministry. They had occulemency barriers. Nothing Bellatrix can't handle. They know something's up. A muggle has a phoenix and appears to be the leader of the group. That muggle, see, he doesn't have any occulemency barriers. One of them had a quick look in his mind. He thinks he invented the starship. That silly muggle also thinks someone can transfigure part of an object and so have the transfiguration stick. But how can a wizard transfigure part of an object?"

"I heard tell of a first year student who cut the inner wall of Azkaban."


	16. Chapter 129: MI6

CHAPTER 129: MI6

Beneath the heart of London is an old complex. This was used in the Second World War as the meeting place of the heads of government and military for the planning of the war itself. It was too difficult to upgrade to modern electronics and had fallen into disuse. Yet in that disuse it found a new use. Its official position of largely abandoned but still secured because it connected too many official government buildings together and its hallways were still used by government officials made a few of its rooms, including the famous map room valuable to MI6 for the planning and tracking of covert ops. Although nobody knew it at the time, today's use of the room was nearly as vital to national security as in Churchill's Darkest Hour. The agents had just begun to grasp a new terror was arising.

Stuck into the map were several pins, but the chief pin (the only white pin) was in Scotland, and contrary to any practice used before there was a white thread coming off of it to a card on the side that merely read "Pin location: 51.0317N, 3.5667W". Yet the card was necessary, for trying to hold the pin location in your head based on surrounding terrain would slip from the mind's grasp as soon as the person looked away. Several more gray pins indicated mapping anomalies located by computer, all of which were cataloged as the computer says the satellite views have a suspicious level of nothing there but the human mind doesn't observe a problem. This had been discovered by reading a mapping engine's source code and finding an indicator that read /* algorithm returns false positives for these coordinates on real data; * test data does not show false positives here for unknown reasons */ The meaning of this was obvious when you knew what you were looking for, but it must have been baffling to the programmer who encountered it. Most of these were in Scotland, yet there were two in London and most disturbingly, one in the North Sea.

An attempt to visit the nearest one, which was right next to King's Cross station, had revealed it was walled off on all sides. Climbing to the roof level had lead to finding the roof was continuous across it. A note was merely added to reference the city planning community for how there is a walled-off section of London was made and to find out who owned the land and MI6 moved on.

Furthermore, there were red pins in London and scattered across Scotland where curious incidents had been reported or really odd disappearances. There were, of course, something like a fifty percent false positive rate, but sorting the true rate out from the background noise wasn't too hard once adjusting for area population.

A destroyer had been dispatched for the anomaly in the North Sea, but it would take some time for it to get there and report back what it found. In the meantime, MI6 elected to pursue the white pin anomaly first. It was too far to go directly from London but a local unit had been dispatched with a backpack battery pack, a backpack GPS unit, a pair of handheld radios with the transmitters frozen open, two magnetic compasses and a gyro compass, and orders to make for the anomaly, by dead reckoning if need be.

Some hours before, the NASA reports had reached them. They were already moving to investigate the local anomalies but the report had put speed to their actions. An uprising in the Scottish Highlands was concerning. An uprising in the Scottish Highlands that had put somebody on the space station while at war with itself was a threat. A threat of unknown capabilities was to be investigated before mobilizing the army. A threat for which they could not get any answers was deemed an impossibility.

There was a knock on the door. "Courier Dispatch."

"Come."

"Your requested satellite photos from the CIA, sir."

"Prompt work mister. Dismissed."

The grayscale image was pixelated from facsimile transfer, and showed mostly barren terrain, but there was a rather large splotch of almost uniform gray occupying most of the lower right quadrant, and had been circled with a black circle. The notation on the bottom read "no redacting applied: image anomaly present in the original satellite photo; was unable to notice until computer circled it for us".

So, they weren't the only ones encountering vision anomalies. This was instantly relieving to everybody in the room. On the other hand, adding this to space launch capable fringe group was not the most comforting data point. It did, however, have incredible explaining power. Yet "why" was a mystery.

There was another knock on the door, and no announcement.

"Come."

A man with a fiery bird sitting on his shoulder entered.

"Who are you, and what are you doing here?"

"Michael Evans-Verres. I was hoping I would find the situation room still here. As for the question you did not ask, I am the queen's man."

Sometimes the straightforward approach is the best. "I don't suppose you could tell us what is going on in Scotland."

"Ah yes that would be some telling. There is a war going on, and I have been very busy in it. Some would say I should have stayed out, but how could I stay out when the first blow was aimed at my son, and one was aimed at me before I entered it."

"What is it you can do?" A sound question at this point.

"What any man can do, but they leave me mostly to transport because this phoenix is very good at moving multiple at once and will answer only to me."

"Where is your son?"

"In high orbit plotting the next move. For being eleven years old he is far ahead of me in the business of making war. Yet the enemy is stronger than us and smarter than us. We remain out of his reach only by the utmost of cunning and taking advantage of him knowing very little science as of yet. Yet we fear our advantage will not last."

"How did your son get to high orbit?"

"Phoenix, of course."

"Who is we?"

"There is a small country of wizards overlaid on the United Kingdom; I do not understand how exactly, but they seem quite able to ignore whatever parliament says and appear to outsiders to not exist at all. An hour ago you would have been incredulous as to magic existing. Be not so. See that I got all the way in here unchallenged by any guard."

A pause to consider that statement. The satellite photo was produced. "Can you explain why this satellite photograph is blank or why we cannot notice it until the computer found it?"

"I cannot. Yet it makes sense else they would not hide so well."

"Who is the enemy?"

"He was named Tom Riddle, calls himself Voldermort, and is a mass murderer and leader of murderers attempting to rule Magical Britain (for that is what they call their country) and quite possibly the entire world. We don't really know how far he will go."

"How is it you are willing to partake in war of your own free will, and yet dare call upon the state for aid?"

"My son perceives the enemy is a threat to our United Kingdom, not just his Magical Britain. I would be an unworthy citizen if I did not report and did not seek to protect my own country."

"We are working on localizing this threat. What intelligence can you offer by which this threat might be neutralized."

"Shotguns, bazookas, hand grenades, and snipers. Keep moving and dodge everything they hurl at you. I have gone toe-to-toe with their best front-line warriors one at a time and have proven the victor. Even the queen is not safe from having her mind corrupted and compelled to do what she would not choose. There can be no defense against this except for they can only hold about fifty minds corrupted at a time."

"I have come to ask for aid. They cannot manufacture the weapons I named. My son intends to attack, and I am not given to stealing. This is perhaps the only thing by which we can keep them from going after the queen or the prime minister. To mount an attack we need to equip about twenty people with arms, mostly shotguns."

The scales involved were preposterously small to men accustomed to reasoning on the fate of nations, but the fate of nations was before them. The aid asked was small enough to not miss from the national budget. Only the rightness of the action needed to be checked, and that would not take long.

"Wait here. I shall return with your answer within the hour."


	17. Chapter 130: Alley

CHAPTER 130: Alley

Diagon Alley was the true heart of Magical Britain. If you strike at the Ministry, the people route around it. If you strike at Gringotts, the people trade in I.O.U.s of gold not really in their vaults anymore until they win through again and the goblins make good on every last Knut. If you strike at Godric's hollow the people flee and establish new houses. If, horror of horrors, you strike at Hogwarts and make it stick, the heart and soul of Hogwarts is in the professors and a hovel of a building will be made good enough. But if you strike at Diagon Alley you get the real economy of the people and what it means to be a witch or a wizard. For no man is an island and the power to be what they are is only in their trade.

The Dark Lord had struck at Diagon Alley and made it his, and after the Ministry nobody had opposed him. The nation was in the palm of his hand. But this day, General Chaos saw fit to challenge the Dark Lord himself for the first time of his own choosing.

The division of labor was a simple one. The professional Aurors would guard the people safely in Azkaban; while the members of the ex-Order of the Phoenix and any other volunteers would mount an attack on Diagon Alley and try to bring Lord Voldermort down upon them. The counterattack at Hogwarts had cost him too many of his new recruits. There was real hope this attack would be more than a match for all of the remaining death eaters.

So it was that Harry Potter, Alastor Moody, Emmiline Vance, Bahry One-Hand, Hermoine Granger, the Lord and Lady Greengrass, Minerva McGonagall, Theodore Nott, and Nevelle Longbottom who gathered to strike a blow at the Dark Lord. They were soon joined by sixteen British soldiers and two boxes of additional arms brought in by Michael Evans-Verres' phoenix.

Harry's briefing was simple. "The town is not completely evacuated. The enemy is wearing face-concealing masks; but there are two MVPs who have no masks. Bellatrix Black is tall thin mad woman of terrible power, and the Dark Lord himself has a tall body, greenish skin, and glowing red eyes. Don't bother with fancy spells; bring down enemy shields quickly and let the soldiers finish off the targets. If anybody says Az-Reth fire a rocket launcher at him immediately." It is Fiendfyre. If he manages to finish casting the spell you're as good as dead. Hermoine Granger picked up a rocket launcher in her left hand. To the soldiers amazement, a rocket launcher was to her a one-handed weapon. Then phoenix fire picked them up and set them in Diagon Alley, conveniently behind the guard post the death eaters had set up.

The two death eaters in the impromptu guard post behind the leaky cauldrin were caught by surprise and picked off immediately. The noise brought more out of the buildings. Two more were picked off from a distance before they even knew what was happening, and two more didn't have enough time to finish casting protego maximus. Yet now the death eaters had shields up and the distance was still considerable.

Now there were six of them advancing in the street under the cover of interlocked shields. Theodore Nott let lose a breaking drill hex at long range, but there wasn't enough power behind it to bring down their shields. It was too far to hear what they were saying clearly, but when the center death eater was tracing a rune, it was obvious to Harry what was happening. "Fiendfyre! Rocket launchers!" Hermoine got hers off first. It impacted upon the first shield and detonated. There was a tremendous din and the shields seem to give off blue-white sparks, and a brilliant yellow fire took on the firm of a bird and flew at them. A rocket struck it and was no more, while several more went past it at the death eaters. Nobody panicked. There was not enough time to panic. Even as they saw this happen they caught fire and saw they were looking at the wall at the far end of Diagon Alley. "Turn around."

There were death eaters in the road. Some were standing up. Some were on the ground. They did not yet know the enemy was behind them. Their shields wouldn't have cared, but only one death eater still had shields up. In a few seconds, he was the only death eater still on his feet. The remaining death eater did the only sensible thing. He apparated out. The fiendfyre was out of control now, but it was going the wrong way.r With its caster eliminated, it wouldn't last long, but it lasted long enough to burn through the guardpost and punch a hole through the wall separating Diagon Alley from London. There would be firetrucks on the other side in a few minutes.

Harry Potter knew battle, but was inexperienced in war. Alastor Moody took command. "Minerva. Take two soldiers and enter into Ollivander's and take the death eater you will find within dead or alive. Emmiline. Bahry. There are two death eaters in the book store opposite. Take two more soldiers with you and take them. The rest of you, with me. There's a number of them in Gringotts.

It would seem to someone watching that Mad-Eye Moody nearly walked into a stunner. Unfortunately, Lord Greengrass wasn't on his toes and got hit by it after it whizzed passed Moody. Hermoine had learned her lesson well and one innervate later he was back on his feet. The death eater had more than he could handle. Another death eater tried to get at them by surprise but made the mistake of firing a stunner at Michael Evans-Verres and wasn't quick enough to dodge the return nor change his shield harmonics to block his own stunner in time. All the battle-hardened death eaters had been defeated already. These were just more recruits.

The final count was eleven death eaters dead and eight captured on one side to no casualties on the other side.

* * *

There was a reason the Wizarding Wars had reduced to dueling most of the time. If ever armies would take to the field Fiendfyre becomes worth it and the battles devastating on both sides and what few soldiers left (assuming there are any) end up dueling anyway. The Dark Lord had began constructing armies again in the latter days when few could cast Fiendfyre, but he had taught it to many of his soldiers, thus making it likely Fiendfyre battles would reoccur and force switching back. That's the thing about war. Strategies aren't stable.

The death eater that ran away had apparated away once out of sight. He went to the Dark Lord. It was too far for one apparation, so it took him an hour. The Dark Lord would have no part of this battle.

"My Lord, they have taken Diagon Alley. All of my battle-hardened brothers were struck down in seconds. They have some blasting weapon that's faster than Fiendfyre and anybody that tries to fight without a shield they kill in two seconds at some ridiculous range. They have a phoenix and will use it in combat but by the time we knew it was there it was too late to ward against phoenix. What are we to do?"

"Why is it you live when the others are dead?"

"When the interlocked shields collapsed from the initial blast, my piece of it reformed around me. I'm pretty sure I wasn't the only one with a piece of shield but there were quite a few more blasts, leaving me alone with a shield when they got behind us. I didn't see the hex that got my brothers still on their feet. I just saw them fall."

* * *

It took Alastor Moody the better part of an hour to pry the location of Lord Voldermort from one of the death eaters, but he got it.

"Gentlemen, the Dark Lord has taken up residence in the great hall of Hogwarts and will not leave the protection of the Hogwarts wards. It is time to strike while the iron is hot. I will rejoin us promptly in two minutes having canceled out his ability to attack through time."


	18. Chapter 131: Iron

CHAPTER 131: Iron

Even as the Dark Lord was still questioning his servant, the great hall of Hogwarts was filled with fire and an army. Quick as a flash Lord Voldermort leaped to his feet and silently cast shields around himself. The single death eater he was questioning did the same.

The Dark Lord's position was hopeless. It was just he and Bellatrix Black and one single death eater in the great hall, and he could not apparate away, and turning his back to bolt for the door was certain death. But he was not given to surrender. "Jellyfy. Avada Kedavra." he began.

Bellatrix spoke. "Silly Dollies. Avada Kedavra. Another one down. Avada Kedavra."

Alastor Moody leaped out of the way. A killing curse struck Theodore Nott. Another struck Hermoine Granger. But the soldiers fired rocket launchers at Lord Voldermort and Bellatrix Black. A red hexagon appeared to rise up from the floor and ate up the rockets that were aimed true. Voldermort was still the master, and had again cast a spell that could withstand an army. But two of the rockets went high. Blasts reflect off the Hogwarts walls. Bellatrix Black's body was broken while still standing. Voldermort's shield was only partially covering him. Then in wrath Alastor Moody unleashed his own killing curse while Minerva McGonagall managed a breaking drill hex. Voldermort stepped clear of the killing curse and sent his own back. Unfortunately for him, he had stepped right into Minerva's breaking drill hex. Quick as a flash he cast another shield, and just in time for the soldiers saw opportunity and fired upon him.

Then Harry Potter ordered "Grenades!" and cast "Lagann!" "Stuporfy!" even as Alastor Moody was silently casting Saggita Magica. Again the red hexagon swallowed up the spells, but the grenades all came clattering around Voldermort. With a gesture the stones of Hogwarts rose up to defend him. Poor move for Alastor Moody cast the killing curse again and there was nowhere to go and down he went.

The single death eater had ran when the battle started, and there was no time to worry about it while Voldermort was still kicking. Harry Potter said afterwords "Let him go. He will bring word that Lord Voldermort has fallen to the others and they will scatter. Professor McGonagall, if you would be so kind, search the body of Tom Riddle and take up the red crystal you will find there. Now if you will all excuse me. I have something I must do alone." And he picked up Hermoine's body.

Michael Evans-Verres was a quick thinker. "Son, I saw how you were last time when Hermoine died. I fear to leave you alone."

"You need to take the soldiers back now. There's no way you would know this, but she cannot die. I am sorry, but I am not at liberty to disclose what I must do next. In less than an hour you will have answers." And bent with Hermoine's weight on his shoulder he walked out one of the doors and down the hallway.

Michael Evans-Verres got up to follow, but his own phoenix screamed at him. So that, quite simply, was that.

The directions left to Harry to resurrect Hermoine were true and no mistake. A living body was required, but it was not harmed by the process, so there was no reason he could not simply use his own. It would be jarring for Hermoine but he could not spare the risk of telling any others what he knew. So it was in less than an hour's time he and Hermoine walked back to the great hall. The soldiers were all gone now, but his father and Minerva McGonagall were waiting for him. Alastor Moody and Emmiline Vance were discussing plans for moving all the extra people out of Azkaban.

"Son, what is this?"

"Hermoine lives. The secret is hers to keep or tell and not mine."

Minerva McGonagall's face turned an unearthly color when she realized.

* * *

Minerva McGonagall had left for her office, having not yet any idea what she would do when she got there. It didn't take very long for her to realize Hermoine was following here, but even as she turned Hermoine spoke first.

"Professor, I need someone to talk to, and Professor Flitwick just won't do."

Her tone was soft. "It's been a long day child, but what is it?"

"I am shaken. I have just now learned that Harry will go to any length to protect me, though I doubt that it is as he thinks on that day when he challenged the Wizengamot that nobody else would do what was necessary."

"You have your whole life before you. I would not worry too much about what one boy thinks of you at this age, even one as brash as this."

"But moving on to other matters, you have been wise so far to not speak of what you have, but the mask has been torn for those who have sense, by which I mean Mad-Eye Moody. If I did not know you were a most unlikely murderess, I would be reporting you to the aurors right now. Let us take it from on your person and put it at the bottom of your chest for the moment and worry about a more suitable place soon."

Then Professor McGonagall seemed to look far off and spoke more thoughtfully. "The chains of prophecy are broken. It was not Harry who defeated the Dark Lord but Mad-Eye Moody, and where is the power he knows not? I would think it were the muggle science, but it just isn't. The Death Eaters stayed away from muggle stuff, but I have it on good authority" that would be Harry Potter "that he knew of it. It can't be this crystal either, for the Dark Lord obviously knew it."

Hermoine replied "that crystal is the Stone of Permanency. It kinda seems to break the rules, but we've been breaking them for a week already. Come to think of it, where did the idea of transfiguring metal into oil come from? I can only think of one person, but you can't have gotten it from him!"

"His father. What a wizard he would have made if I didn't have to remove him from transfiguration first. The muggles grow stronger, while we grow weaker. Still, it may be for the best. I shant want to think if what would happen if a mind like his were in the body of the next Dark Wizard."

Hermoine said, "I wouldn't worry too much about that. A few muggle-borns a year and sooner or later one would come over with enough knowledge that we might have had another chance; I almost was myself you see, it just depended on whether or not I read the right books in time or not. If somehow someone managed to come in later, or perchance maintained connections with her parents long enough and went to muggle college after Hogwarts, a different thing might be."

"Excuse me, the wards have gone off again. Some muggles have crossed the outer perimeter and the normal deterrence is not functioning for some reason."

It was, of course, the MI6 team homing inerrantly on Hogwarts castle by GPS. The wards that would cause them to want to turn left or right just weren't strong enough to overcome the direct order and the GPS readout. The wards hiding the fact there was anything here besides a wasteland were working just fine until they walked into the first tree, at which point the power of their belief became strong enough to permit them to see their immediate surroundings. On reflection, of course it had to be like this, otherwise it wouldn't be safe for parents of muggleborns to walk around in Hogwarts (which happened on rare occasions).

Minerva approached them under cover of dissoultion. This took considerable as they were at the far end of the forbidden forest after all, and since to the wards she was but deputy headmistress, she couldn't apparate there. The typical way of running off a muggle who stumbled on Hogwarts was a false memory charm and a Confoundous, but that obviously wasn't a good idea today because one of them was plainly talking to somebody in a mirror.

So she went about two dozen steps at a right angle and softly cast Quietus, hoping they wouldn't hear it, then the patronous charm and sent it to Michael with "Some more of your friends are here and you need to send them home; about two and a quarter miles east-northeast of the hall." It wouldn't take him long to get there and take care of the situation, which was probably for the best. She really didn't want to know how he'd handle it.


	19. Chapter 132: Aftermath

CHAPTER 132: Aftermath

Michael Evans-Verres addressed the Wizengamot not as a prisoner nor as a person of any power, but as a hero. "We have won through. But we should tremble and quake in our boots. The weapon that we used was beyond reach of Tom Riddle this time, but my son tells me that he shall swiftly return and he cunning and patient and wears many masks. As for me, I shall return to my studies and keep the phoenix as a pet. For now I have something worthy to look into. I shall find the marker of Atlantis in the blood. The Elder Wand I have no right to, but it has chosen me and while any of you can take it by power from me none by right. It shall pass to my son.

"But humanity shall reach for the stars. I shall do whatever I can to see to that. Though the magical devices wither away, and spells are slowly forgotten, the raw power of free transfiguration shall not be lost and while it is ours to hold the stars shall be within our grasp. And even though the stars die in the heavens I say to you humanity shall not fall."

Harry Potter spoke next. "I see that I have for the time but one task. Every day I must cast patronous and seek Tom Riddle. I suspect that nobody else can cast patronous with that intention. I must ask of you that we may accept his surrender; else it might not work right and leave us exposed."

Amela Bones gasped. "Why should we show the Dark Lord mercy?"

"Because he is wise enough to know he is beaten and the patronous cannot be cast to end life but only to save it. If I cannot offer him his life in return for surrender I cannot cast it with the intention of finding him."

And all there was in the great hall was an uproar for some time. It was Lucius Malfoy who managed to first make himself effectively heard. "I remember you facing me and would stop at nothing to save this Hermoine Granger from Azkaban. Now you would save the Dark Lord. What have you become that you think you can bend the Wizengamot to your will whilst taking neither side? I cannot imagine the arrogance required."

"Lucius Malfoy, as you know, I will not risk the world's destruction. An intelligent dark wizard is not a threat, but rather an extintion event. Swiftly shal this one return, and swiftly shall we deal with him, while we still can. Look to your numbers. The side of Dumbledore has been bloddied, but the side of the Death Eaters has been massacred."

Lucius Malfoy roared, "How dare you accuse me openly of being a Death Eater? You shall pay for this slander upon my house and upon my name."

"My father is not an occulmens, and you failed to recognize the phoenix under disollution."

"Pah. Your father is a muggle. His testimony will not be considered valid."

At that, Amelia Bones cut in. "But your own words spoken before the Wizengamot just now will suffice."

To which Lucius made no reply but lifted his cane and before any could react he blurred out of existance before them. Several finites were sent in his general direction, but nothing strong enough to contend with his artifact-level disollution, quietus, and other subtle things all woven together.

Alastor Moody said, "Good riddance. He'll be more trouble later, but not as much now I hope, since he has been unmasked."

* * *

Michael Evans-Verres reached out and plucked the starship from high orbit and delivered it to Queen Elizabeth, then his wife from the International space station and went home.

NASA retrieved the plans for the warp drive from the International Space Station. Between London and Washington there were many words but they agreed to jointly develop the technology because between the two of them they had the two pieces to reverse engineer all of the technology involved. But they would be utterly stumped, because the enhanced capacitors were beyond their making.

High above the earth, beyond the moon's orbit, was a satellite that man did not place there. A week ago it had recorded the unique signature of the unshielded Alcubarre drive and transmitted its report to its owners. Twice it had confirmed its findings. Its owners were considering what they observed. It was too soon and too fast but there were only two alternatives. Either humans had developed a warp drive out of time, or somebody else was interfering and didn't care who knew. Either way it was time to investigate.

* * *

Tom Riddle gazed upon the stars. In the strange form between life and death he bore no resentment nor hatred nor any other deep-set emotions, and the only character trait that he could posess was curiosity. But he knew this state would not last for long. Soon the resurrection stone would do his bidding and he would find a body of someone willing or someone too weak to resist. He was pretty sure Bellatrix Black was dead, and if not he knew where she would be. But whom shall he take? It didn't take him that long to realize that someone currently unknown to him would be a far better choice anyway.

Tom Riddle gazed upon the stars. The sun was masked by the dish. Ahead was Aldabaran. His view rotated regularly, retaining the momentium imparted to it by the Centaur long ago. By the blindest luck he was in the right place in the right time. He saw a distortion and a glint of light tracking across the heavens towards the sun. He was in deep space, and he thought he knew he was farther than any man had ever journied, so "Who was this?" he wondered.

Then Lord Voldermort, master of legilimency, made his first move.

He listened. "No more clams for us eh. We are indeed fortunate to take a look at a world that has turned up star travel in an instant." And then he was out of range.

But they knew he was there. Nameless horror. Cunning mind.

As swiftly as the encounter began, it was over, but the damage had been done. Of all the people to represent humanity, this was the worst. They would approach stealthily and not actually make contact until they could determine the threat level of this planet.

* * *

Satosi Yamamoto had been watching the telescope. There it was, the same signal of an antimatter power source again, but this time much weaker, almost as though somebody was masking it somehow. That really ought to be impossible he thought. Or maybe somebody got a warp drive one hundred times more efficient. Or maybe something else entirely. Then he cursed under his breath. That signal was barely above background noise; they could have been seeing it for years and ignored it as random stray neutrons as it didn't form a point source. He didn't like the implications much of what he was looking at.


	20. Chapter 133: Genetics

CHAPTER 133: Genetics

It was August of the year 1996. The Human Genome project was well underway and Michael Evans-Verres was in the thick of it. Nobody knew how he was getting around, but the fact that he never put in reimbursements for plane tickets wasn't completely secret any more. Perhaps the scientists could have cared more, but they were too engrossed in their work to put in the right kind of work to actually find out how. Kind of like how, if you want to know how scammer has a fake power generator, the right kind of man to hire is a magician.

He had pulled something of a trick though. He ensured by slight of plan that DNA samples from Petuna Evans and Harry James Potter Evans-Verres were used in the sequencing of the human genome. With only two samples, it should drop out in reconcilliation, and he'd have to weed through the conflicts in secret to find what he was looking for. He was, of couse, looking for the Atlantean marker, but he couldn't just tell anybody that.

He was sitting in his hotel room in the evening after the conference he had just attended, with his phoenix on his shoulder again. This work had been hard on the phoenix, as it lacked the capacity for any amount of long- term planning and its heart yearned for the battle. But on a winter night six months ago he had stood under the stars and showed it the star Sirius and said "The time is coming when that star will explode. When it does it will extinguish all terrestial life on Earth. It is now my labor to see to it that when it does explode, humanity is brought through the storm." And his phoenix was content.

He had printouts in his hands. He was comparing the sample of Petuna Evans to the reference sample as it was assembled. He knew that among the differences one of them would be the marker, and that it would occur only on one side because she carried only one copy.

Near the end of chromosome six he found another difference. The lead-in marker where an activator would attach to signal RNA transcriptaze was different. At first he thought he was looking at just another regulatory variation and went looking for the end, but then he saw that they coded two completely different proteins. Polymerase splice error? Maybe something else? A completely new sequence inserted in the middle like this would play havok with crossovers. He scanned down for the resynchronization that would signal the end of the insertion. Two hours later he frowned. He hated round numbers. The sequence was exactly thirty thousand bases long and had seventeen protein activation sequences but no introns. Something was not right. In any case, there was nothing to do but check Harry's DNA and see if this was a mistake. But it wasn't a mistake: Harry had the same pecular DNA sequence in the same place. Then he checked the other sides, and found what by this point he was expecting to find. Harry had two copies but Petuna had only one.

He picked up the phone. "Cancel my appointments for tomorrow. Something has come up." He pondered where he would go and who he would tell first. His first thought was the Wizengamut, but only a few more seconds of though revealed this was a bad idea. His second thought was a little better. He picked up the papers and they burned up with him and they reappeared in his home. He powered up his personal copier and started to lay the sheets on it.

Petuna Evans had gotten used to his comings and goings by now, but this was out of the ordinary. She came down in her nightgown and asked sleepily what was going on.

"I found it honey. The Atalantean marker. There's nothing else this could possibly be."

"It's two in the morning. Can't it wait until tomorrow?"

"The statute of secrecy is still in force, but I don't think there's a single Wizard other than Harry who reads the scientific journals. I'm going to get this thing published with no explanation before they know what's going on, and you're going to help me do it."

Two days was all it took and it was off to peer review. "The Case of the Missing Introns" got published quite rapidly. The inclusion of a couple of strands of Petuna's hair along with the laconic note "check the hair" had sped this thing past peer review at an unusually fast pace for this kind of thing.

* * *

The very next day Alastor Moody appeared within the Evans-Verres house looking even more grave than usual. "Harry Potter's patronous found the Dark Lord today and was sent back with a curse."

"A night is coming that makes Voldermort look like a sunny day by comparison. I battle now for all humanity that something may pass through the night and live for the new dawn, but if needs I must I can take a break from my true battle and turn on Voldermort. Though if he knew what I could never tell him, he would surely rather have peace with me, else the night destroy even he."

"Stupify. Innervate."

Harry caught his father before he hit the ground. "Sorry, father. I had to trick you as the Elder Wand cannot be passed willingly from one hand to another, and I have to keep Voldermort's hand off it."

Shortly thereafter, over three cups of coffee and two cups of cocoa (for Petuna was home and Hermoine was only a minute later in arriving), "And now we discuss battle plans. I have a scheme worthy of Merlin. Voldermort will not attack immediately but must first gather new followers to himself. There are no competant and powerful death eaters remaining save for Lucius Malfoy himself, but our strength is too far gone and he will not again be caught in an anti-apparation trap.

"Therefore I mean to raise up Dumbledore higher than Penelle ever did. Father, we must track down your starship and pull it from the warehouse and put it back into service, for Hermoine and I are going for Dumbledore. I must take the stone from the hospital with me, but I have in mind to pull a trick so that it is usable there even as it is in my pocket. In the hand of my deputy Nevelle Longbottom it will serve."

The phoenix screamed.

"Fawkes?"

Caw.

No, not Fawkes then. But Harry knew, they all knew, his plan was a bad one. A plan that's garden-variety bad doesn't get a phoenix screaming at you. If a phoenix knows your plan is bad, it is bad, hopelessly bad.

"Ok, new plan. I'll need a doomsday weapon sufficient to scare the Dark Lord into running away, and in the meantime some way to track down the resurrection stone. He likes intercontinental portkeys so 'somewhere nearby' is rather meaningless."

Professor Evans-Verres finally spoke. "I know just what to do, if you can stand unconquered for a little while."

"Come phoenix, I think it's high time me and my love disappeared."

They burned up, leaving Harry, Hermoine, and Mad-Eye Moody behind.


	21. Chapter 134: Requirements

CHAPTER 134: Requirements

Harry Potter pased back and forth in the upper levels of Hogwarts. Lord Voldermort was out there, and could not be reasoned with. All the cards seemed to be in his hands, but Harry had one advantage, that of a fast action. But there was no way to find where Voldermort was. This seriously disappointed him. The words of Voldermort haunted him "Swiftly shall I return and take vengence", "a ring you have seen only once", "shall float free of my horcruxes". All these he considered. Muggle weapons would be pretty useless now he surmised, although Voldermort didn't know it. The power to float free would mean that he would be able to jump from body to body as it was struck down, and he saw how fortunate it was in the last battle that he was struck down by a killing curse and not by a hand grenade.

The stone. He needed to find the stone.

He came to a doorway on his right he was sure wasn't there the last two times he had gone round this hall. The castle had changed again, as far as he knew. It did that from time to time. But curiosity is ever the weakness of the Ravenclaw. He entered the new door.

There were shelves on every wall and tables in the middle of the room, and every shelf and every table surface and most of the floor was covered in junk. This wasn't normal. This seemed to him more like finding a magic shop before the final dungeon than what would make sense in a school. On inspecting some of the junk, there was no doubt about it. Most of the stuff here was magical. Time to start going through it and see what could be used.

He proceeded through the first row of tables. Most of the stuff was broken, some of it sputtered when handled, and the rest seemed either of no obvious use or failed to respond to his hand. Of this we should not be surprised. He would call for experienced help eventually, but first the curiosity of the Ravenclaw to solve the puzzle was upon him. This felt like a puzzle conjured up for him to solve, and therefore he would be able to solve it. The statue at the end of the table he bypassed, neglecting to check the tiara on it. Not three feet on the row of tables on his way back to the door he came upon the ring, transparent and bearing the same line in a circle in a triangle glyph that was drawn in therestial blood on his cloak. He rememberd "this you wrought with your finger on a teacup". Being entirely sensible, he didn't handle it, but retrieved a hankerchief from is pocket, wrapped it around the ring, tied it, and put it into his moleskin pouch. Then it was time to go. He would contact Minerva McGonagall first because for some reason he trusted her understaning more. Besides, she was close at hand.

No sooner had he got round the first corner on his way back did he see a red bolt hurtling down the wall at him. He leaped back behind the wall and cast "Tonare! Ravum calveria. Lucius gladius." using the Elder Wand. Immediately a red blade formed around his wand and extended past it. Then with his off hand he drew his own holly wand and cast "Protego." With the Elder Wand, this combination was almost unbeatable. Then he stepped around the corner again.

Whoever it was was either casting wordlessly or behind a quietus because he didn't hear a thing but saw the next red bolt hurtling at him. With his adereneline-fueled reaction time and the Elder Wand's precision he sent the bolt back down the hallway. He still hadn't seen his assalient but he saw the bolt impact on something unseen in the hallway and turn around and come back at him again. A second bolt like a streak of white lightning spiraling around followed it. He batted the red bolt back again and with surprising speed turned his hand and the breaking-drill hex slammed into his blade and was destroyed. "One of /those/ battles" he groaned inwardly even as there was a spark on his shield where an unseen bolt impacted upon it. He was invulnerable to everything save the killing curse, but his opponent was probably older and more experience and wasn't having to expend magic so quickly to sustain the Most Ancient Blade. He raised his wand and drew his blade across his chest and advanced, projecting confidence he didn't actually have. His opponent would have to withdraw or lose; however there was a lot of hallway up here.

The silence of the hallway was getting on his nerves. "Finite incantem!" "Lumios" he cast, hoping to reveal something of his opponent. He was so close now he could see the distortion lines from the disollution. Then the distortion wavered and retreated and ran down the hall and took a left. Harry ran down the hall and took a right.

After descending two flights of stairs, Harry dismessed the blade but kept running with his shield up until he had reached the entrance to Headmistress McGonagall's office. "Impermanence" he spoke to the gargoyles and they stepped aside. Up one flight of stairs, and there she was. Only then did he drop his shield.

"What is the meaning of this intrusion?"

"I was attacked on the upper levels. I'm sorry." Harry panted for breath.

"Who was it?"

"Somebody who can cast a really good disollution. I couldn't see or hear a thing."

"Where is the person?"

"He ran away down a different set of stairs", Harry said. "But we've got a breakthrough. Resurrection stone." The last two words were to his pouch, which promptly produced his hankerchief again, which he placed on McGonagall's desk. "Careful, it's horcruxed."

Headmistress McGonagall said "Stand back!" and appeared to ready herself to cast some absurdly powerful spell.

"Wait", Harry said. "Call Mad-Eye. He can cast a killing curse."

"Will that even work?"

"It's easy to check, and we're none the worse off it fails. We want the stone intact if at all possible."

With a wave of her wand, Minerva lit the fireplace, then called up her patronous. "Tell Mad-Eye we've got one of Voldie's horcruxes and want his assistance immediately." The moonlit cat turned and disappeared with seemingly more urgency than usual.

Then Harry cast his own bright patronous, and only then started to explain, right as the floo fire lit up and Mad-Eye stepped out of it, "My patronous can block a killing curse, in case Mad-Eye misses."

"I don't miss, boy."

Harry undid the knot on the hankerchief, revealing the ring within. Harry's patronous moved opposite Mad-Eye from the ring. "The stone on that ring is the ressurection stone, but it's also one of Voldermort's horcruxes. I think a killing curse will destroy the horcrux and leave the stone operable. That is of course, if you can't think of a better use for a horcrux."

Mad-Eye Moody stepped up and pointed his wand right at it from an inch away and without even moving it cast "Avada Kedavra" even as Harry's patronous tried to slip under the desk. Nobody had time to see the bolt but there was a burst of magic and something like a ghost appeared and broke into two pieces, one of which shot away south-southeast and the other shot up through the ceiling.

They looked at the stone, which was intact though the ring mountings had melted.

"What was your patronous trying to do?"

"Protect the students. My patronous can block the killing curse, but I think we yet need to keep that ability secret for now."

"Where did you learn that, son?"

"I blocked one of Voldermort's curses a long time ago. He was quite surprised."

This slip-up ended up being far too clever. Mad-Eye Moody and Minerva McGonagall would think he was again referring to the time as an infant where everyone believed he had survived a killing curse rather than him being in Azkaban where this actually happened.

"Wouldn't that cause another explosion?"

"Only if Voldermort was the caster. Our magics are incompatible."

"Come on, son. How do you know the patronous blocked the curse rather than the incompatability?"

"You had to be there."

And there was nothing Alastor Moody could say to that.

AN: Of course Harry knows the password. McGonagall is nobody's fool.


	22. Chapter 135: Requirements Part II

CHAPTER 135: Requirements II

Alastor Moody was puzzled. Harry had found the Room of Requirement, which isn't all that strange, but he had gotten a horcrux from it, which was. You can't summon horcruxes, everybody with any experience in dealing with dark wizards knew this. "Accio horcrux" failed outright, almost as though it was interdicted. But the Room of Reqirement just summoned one.

The rule of science is rather simple. Given two hypotheses, come up with some experiments for distinguishing between the two, and run them. The obvious experiment was find the Room of Requrement (not easy) while thinking you need the Pioneer space probe. But he already knew the answer to that one by checking the library. The Room of Requirement could only summon things that were either in Hogwarts or (potentially, depending on how he interpreted the notes) owned by Hogwarts.

Then the shoe dropped.

Harry couldn't have cast patronous to block a killing curse as an infant. Accidental magic is very powerful, and has been known to break Gamp's rule, but there's no way it can cast any kind of patronous, or else little children would never ever be harmed by a dementor. Accidental magic worked by casting what the child believed he or she needed, not by what charm the child thought he needed to cast. A little child if faced with a dementor (shudder) would, if it perceived the danger in time, apparate away, usually to some safe spot known to the child. If that spot was still too close to the dementor, (shudder) ...

But the patronous charm required mental discipline to cast and hold. Harry didn't have it the first time around, everybody knew that. Then there's that thing. The reason he'd been so quick to believe it was Harry's patronous that came to him was the simple fact that only members of the Order of the Phoenix knew how to do that, at least until Harry had told Draco about it.

Harry didn't cast a patronous when Voldermort came to kill him. Harry had blocked a killing curse with his patronous some other time. Harry had blocked Voldermort's killing curse with his patronous some other time. It couldn't have been that day that Harry called for help; there was no explosion. Harry had battled Voldermort some time before that fateful day when Voldermort dared again to walk openly.

Harry had battled Voldermort the day Bellatrix was sprung from Azkaban. Harry had lied about his activity if not his whereabouts. Harry was the only thing known to scare dementors, one of the few things it was known that Voldermort could not do. The dementors at Azkaban had been scared into disobeying the aurors.

Harry had sprung Bellatrix from Azkaban.

Why hadn't anybody realized this much sooner?

Because Harry had passed the test of proving his time turner hadn't been used yet that day. The laws of time were set in stone. Or were they? He had already defeated them under the directon of a muggle. Michael Evans-Verres, Harry's father, had seen immediately how to set aside the laws of time. Perhaps Harry had done the same? It wasn't that implausible compared to scaring a dementor.

But why would Harry spring Bellatrix from Azkaban?

Sometimes constant vigilance wasn't enough.

"I will go to Azkaban and start snapping fingers. It might cost me my life, but by the time I'm done there won't be an Azkaban anymore."

He only had first year magics. Greater magics by far would be required for Azkaban to cease to exist. No wait, they weren't. He himself had powered a starship with a ridicously underpowered transfiguration that was merely difficult to learn but Harry already knew. The son thinks like the father. The destruction of Azkaban was well-within the power range of a first-year student who just happened to have been raised by a muggle scientist, and that was a terrible thought.

And Harry had said that Voldermort was learning science as though it was a terrible threat. At Voldermort's power level, ...

New requrement. Find a way to take down Voldermort alive so he could be obliviated. That knowledge was simply too dangerous in Voldy's hands. Would that even work? Normally it didn't, but Voldy's horcruxes were different and he was casting interdicted magic through them, and Hermoine's horcrux hadn't reset her memory to the point when it was formed. There was no reason to believe it wound't work. For the sake of all humanity, it had better work.

But first, time to go speak with Minerva, then Amelia Bones.

* * *

"What? Take him alive? Are you blooming mad?" Amelia Bones was furious. "I will not risk one auror in battle with Voldermort one single second longer than I have to. If that means killing him again, so much the better."

"Amelia, listen to me", Alastor said. "He's not like any other dark lord to ever walk the face of the earth. The horror stories of dark deeds committed by wizards in the name of dark lords long defeated pale in comparison to the corruption of this one. He remembers. The next dark wizard's body that arises in his name casts interdicted magics that he knows, and it has just come to my attention that he has already learned magics that can literally destroy the world in an instant.

"Take him alive and obliviate him. Wipe it all out. Then kill him, or better yet, the kiss, if you have any dementors left.

"If you ever find out where he is, send for me. I will face him again."

"Thanks for the offer," Amelia said, "but that's quite illegal. It's a pity I can't hire you back on. I would in a heartbeat if I could."

"Too bad Bahry One-Hand got obliviated. He faced Voldermort alone and lived. Someone should tell him about it."

"Wait just one minute. Why are we saying you-know-who's name out loud again? Isn't it still tabooed?"

"My dear Amelia Bones, if there's any place I want him to come, it's right here."

Then to everybody who was listening in, "If faced with an opponent and aurors on the other side, cast area effect spells so your bolts don't go right through when dodged and hit your friends. Voldermort cannot be outdueled but even he cannot duel an army."

Then almost at a whisper, "I should have asked this a long time ago, but do you know of any short-duration shield spell that can withstand an army that looks like a red octagon?"

"No, sorry, I do not."

Reese Belka, a newly-hired clerk, cut in, "Sorry, but I couldn't help but overhear. I saw one of those once back in Hogwarts. It was really weird. A little firstie witch shouldn't have been able to cast anything like that, but she did. Wandlessly."

"Wait what?"

Me and my big mouth though Reese. "I-um-"

Then with surprising patience Alastor asked again, "What year? What month? That's all I need to know."

"1992, March 1992"

Mad-Eye said something unworthy of printing.

"What is it Moody?" asked Amelia Bones.

"The one year we get a good defense professor and it's you-know-who himself. I think we're looking for him in all the wrong ways. See, he is intelligent, cunning, and patient beyond measure and still unredeemably evil."

They all felt the time pressure bearing down upon them, but saving the people from the dark lord was beyond reach of prophesy. Reese Belka pointed a finger at Mad-Eye and spoke words not her own that would haunt them forever: "You have cheated time, therefore this war shall run for years unnumbered and you will not escape its burden until the last enemy is destroyed."


	23. Chapter 136: War

CHAPTER 136: War

The prophecies are sent to those who can make or break them. This is taught in divination to everybody, just in case. Some say the prophecies always come true, but a few know of the prophecies that did not.

Not ten minutes later a clerk delivered another report to Amelia Bones. Yet another dark wizard had appeared calling himself Lord Voldermort. They both groaned, "Not again." There had been multiple copycats, easily dispatched, like the dark tales of old where a wizard would appear with the name of a dark wizard long defeated and with his cunning, but never his power.

But this report was not like these. The reports spoke not of dark rituals but of simple spells being cast in no known language, the words slipping from the hearer's grasp. A sound Harry Potter had shown them how to learn to recognize. A machine (fancy that) could read a book with the incantation of an interdicted spell, and the hearer would fail to grasp the words spoken.

The other shoe dropped.

"The defense professor from four years ago was the Dark Lord. Harry couldn't tell us, but he taught us the unmistakable sign without telling us why."

Mad-Eye Moody and Alemlia Bones stared at each other.

Mad-Eye spoke calmly but forcefully. "I want twelve aurors, and I want them to lock down the whole area with four overlapping anti-apparation jinxes before he even knows we're there. I will meet him face to face."

"Just one minute cowboy!" Amelia Bones shot back. "That's not our territory and that action would be tatamout to war with the Magical Kingdom of Bornu."

"Then let us first contact Bornu, then go. I think I can persuade them Voldermort is at war with all the world."

* * *

Mad-Eye Moody and Amelia Bones and twelve hit wizards had very rapidly journeyed to the Bornu and were now inside their department of law enforcement. There was, of course, some considerable difficulty in convincing the aurors of Bornu that their intervention was truly necessary, but the fact that an irregular who bore no rank nor office but was of considerable power was leading the group weighed heavily on the eventual decision that their action would be permitted to be undertaken.

Yet this was not taken without trepedition, nor without a watchful eye, for twenty aurors of Bornu were assigned as much to keep watch over Mad-Eye as to fight a dark lord. They too had the manner of battles between high-end wizards tended to revert to dueling and adding numbers beyond two or three to one would serve mainly to exhaust their opponents. The chief auror gave orders to "go with him and see that he harms only the aformentioned dark wizard and his allies. I want this dark wizard alive or dead, preferrably dead."

Once outside, Mad-Eye Moody gave his commands to the aurors from Britain and then to those sent with him. "Assigned teams, quickly lock down the lair. I and Mrs. Bones and the rest of you are going in the front door. The dark wizard is to be taken alive at all costs. You can kill him if you like, but not until I'm done with him."

The first challenge was the door. Moody's alhomara simply wasn't strong enough to unlock it, pretty much as expected. He stood there for some time puzzling over the most efficient way to break the wards that were keeping it locked. One of Bornu's aurors was a wardbreaker, so he came up as well. At once Moody leaped back from the door just before a killing curse came through the door at him. That was enough to convince the wardbreaker to stay back. Then Mad-Eye applied his wand to the ground and a mole-hole-looking mound of dirt extended itself towards the door and seemed to run dirt up the door. "Everybody get down. I'm going to blast it open." Then Alastor Moody cast "Protego Maximus" even as he held his wand against the ground. A few tiny bits of dirt, no more in total than a tenth of a grain of salt, became antimatter, and there was this tremendous bang and dirt and splinters were everywhere. So powerful was the blast that Mad-Eye's shield actually came down and he was thrown back. Bits of the door still clung to hinges and more bits to the doorframe as the overpowered colloportus refused to give up keeping the no-longer-extant door locked.

In they went, Amelia Bones first, more foolhardy than brave. There wasn't much in the upper levels besides a few minions, mostly panicing because apparate wasn't working any more and they went down with about as much difficulty as a knife goes through butter. Moody jumped aside just before a killing curse came up through the floor at him and continued on through the ceiling. Most of the aurors following these two were hanging well back now, rightly very nervous about this behavior. All the more so when Moody and Bones dissoultioned themselves.

Down four levels they caught a glimpse of the Dark Lord even as he fled down yet another flight of stairs. He didn't seem to want to face Moody much, but rather snipe at him for as long as possible. Down the sixth and last level, Moody finally thought he would have him, but even as he came down the stairs with a wall only on the outside to a room spaning the entire stronghold he found a fiendfyre phoenix in his face. Quickly did the hunter become the hunted as Moody had no choice but to turn and run right back up the stairs, quickly dropping his dissolution so as to not run into someone on his way back. Two flights later, he was huffing and puffing and generally showing his age. This, however, left Amelia Bones with room to act. Amelia had managed to learn that at this level, shields were a waste of time and the two of them spent quite a long time dodging each other's stunners. When it comes down to the end the highest level of the power ladder looks pretty much like the lowest at a hundred times speed. The great spells, and even the ones that can battle an army, are pretty much a waste as everything has a counter and the stunner uses less magic so that's pretty much what they do. Then there was this welcoming sight of a green bolt coming down through the floor at an angle almost right on target and she knew that fiendfyre had lost its way or burned out and Mad-Eye Moody would be rejoining her soon.

That he did promptly. The Dark Lord unleashed Jellify because with two targets area effect spells suddenly make sense, then applied his wand to the wall and at once there was a tremendous bang right next to Mad-Eye Moody. Yet even as he flew threw the air he cast "Stuporfy!", but this left him no time to roll with the impact and he was flung sideways onto the ground. The Dark Lord dodged upwards yet in doing so took his eyes off the bolt, which promptly turned into him.

Amelia Bones had somehow managed to stay on her feet though she was now standing on the floor rather than the steps. She wasted no time and walked over to Mad-Eye and immediately cast "Episkey" with all her might. She didn't know how injured he was and didn't want to find out.

As the shock cleared, Alastor Moody got up off the ground and staggered over to the Dark Lord. A couple of the braver aurors came down the smashed staircase. "It is Lord Voldermort. There is no denying that signature. Only Harry Potter, myself, and Voldermort could have cast that last spell, and Harry isn't here." Then he pointed his wand and cast "Obliviate!" Then to the aurors he said "There is your Dark Lord with no memories. Do as you will with him. I am sorry it has to be this way, but this is the second time he has come back from being dead with his power intact. Should he be permitted to do it again, I fear he will be too much for me. Search this place, find any horcruxes he may have made and destroy them for even now they are very dangerous to you."

One of the aurors raised a wand and cast "Avada Kedavra. Everto. Scourgify." and the body was no more. "You were right to come here, but now you must go. You have broken several laws, but your heart is true. I will report the dark lord is dead by my hand and that you were indespensible in the fight. All will be forgiven in due time."

* * *

Tom Riddle gazed upon the stars. He knew nothing, but saw the stars in wonder.

This situation would not last. Lord Voldermort had sacrificed some of his magic to make this the pinnacle of his creation. The plack was a version two horcrux, while the strut it was fastened to was a version one horcrux. The strut to the left side (mind, the Pioneer Plack was mounted facing inwards) was given the ability to cast Arresto Momentium but would take a very long time to build up enough magic to do so while the strut on the right extended the range at which legilimency could be cast. With the two horcruxes in contact with each other, extending the range was unnecessary. Here was a last defense against a great foe who should manage to guess his secret. Obliviate would not flow across from a version two horcrux to a version one horcrux, and this horcrux was kept active. A version one horcrux is kind of like a ghost and never gets bored. This one had three tasks. First of all, it was always watching ahead to use the empowered strut to cast Arresto Momentium should there be anything to collide with. Second, it was constantly using legilimency to copy all memories from the version two horcrux, and thus from the living Voldermort while there was one to itself, and third, to cast false memory charm to restore any obliviated memories.

From a blow like this one with all the memories obliviated, it would take years to repair, and even then large chunks of memory would reside only in the version one horcrux. These could still be recalled easily enough, but would present for awhile the problem of Lord Voldermort not knowing what he knew.


	24. Chapter 137: Security

CHAPTER 137: Security

It was April Fools Day of the year 2002. This day was singularly inappropriate for Professor Evans-Verres plan. Nevertheless, this was the day it was first made ready. The plan was one part brillaint and three parts insane. He was going to hand the powers of the world a weapon so strong it would break society to keep Voldermort at bay, in the hope it would never be used.

The device was not simple. Rather this was, as we should term it, towards a third infinity. Not towards the infinitely large of cosmology, nor towards the infinitely small of the particles being discovered in the colliders, but the infinite complexity of life. Let us be fair, none of these are true infinities, but the scales start looking like each other after awhile.

He had taken the measles virus and preturbed it so that the existing vaccinations would not cover it, then prepared a new protean sequence that would inject a copy of its genetic material into the cell nucleus yet not the host DNA. This was tricky business as he need it to work but not kill the host cell. He had done this line first in the hope that someone else would do some of the other hard parts first so he could stand on the shoulder of a giant, and he was correct. For not one month ago, somebody had published the piece he lacked. He strung together a new set of eukaryotic activators and prepared a splice uing the newly published CRISPR/Cas9 technique. This was truly brilliant. The sequence contained within itself another copy of CRISPR/Cas9 and anybody who happened to inherit one copy would pass it to all of that person's descendents. This would become known as gene drive, but was just not heard of in those days. The gene drive payload was the Atlantean marker he had discovered so many years ago.

He had just finished packing the vials. One vial would be sent to each power with a letter written in Latin. This was no accident, as the Latin would mask the author and he had no intention of these being traced; and he hoped the mark of a letter in Latin would still be understood as of one scientist to another even though it was no longer customarily used as such. The letter read something along these lines "I give to you a weapon. On the day that you see darkness and power spreading across the globe against you, this is the last resort. Use it on your own people that they may make it through the night. I fear this night shall be longer and darker than any that has yet befallen man. Yet here is wisdom, for this is powerful medicine and it will of itself break your society yet not lead it to utter ruin. Yet pray that this night never come to pass."

Each vial was packed in dry ice and teaming with his modified measles. If any power looked and saw that it was measles yet not measles as they knew it, and sequenced it they might guess. The principles of engineering would be easy to read, and if they manufactured the Atlantean proteans who knows what would happen. Even he hadn't dared try that.

"Honey, it is done. The packages will be picked up in tomorrow's mail. But there is a little bit left." He handed her a stopped eyedropper. "Now see that I have listened to you and I truly love you. This is dangerous, but it's what you wanted. There is no centaur. There is only your heart. This is as the potion your sister gave you so very long ago, and I am sorry I did not believe you sooner.

"Look into your heart and decide which world you want to belong to, for touch one particle from that potion and there is no going back. So great is my love for you that I give you a treacherous gift. I cannot choose for you. Love must be a choice."

Her face screwed up. "You speak like we're going to part. After all this I have been through."

"No Honey we will not part. Whatever you choose, I will follow. My work for the fate of the world is done. Now I am free to love you as you deserve to be loved."

"Caaaaw!"

* * *

Alastor Moody understood the dream of man. For he saw in the end the hope of overcoming Voldermort was not in beating him but in the end wrapped up in the dream of man. Reaching outward, spreading across the galaxies, never again to be tied down to one vulnerable planet.

Lord Voldermort was down again, and they had plenty of time. There was nothing to prepare, for who knew what form he would take and by what means he would strike and how long he would study them from the shadows. There was only the training, always the training. New aurors had to be made ready all the time.

But for the moment, Alastor Moody was tending to the dream of man.

He had in his hands a Request for Proposal for some high-grade capacitors. His newfound education had just barely been enough to understand the proposal before him. These were normal-looking supercapacitors except for a couple of numbers including being vacuum-rated (which he now knew wasn't that hard to do) and an unusual breakdown voltage. But that breakdown voltage: an exponent of 17 in an electrical apparatus is not normal, and he recognized the significance immediately. There was only one place in all the world he could take this RFP if Jet Propulsion Labratory would have any chance of getting it filled.

So he prepared a cover letter and took up the RFP and went to Gringotts, Statute of Secrecy be darned. Goblins could be made to understand, and for the right incentive could overlook the technicalities of Wizard Law. The richness of JPL contracts was known to him, and, he hoped, to Griphook. Thus he found himself in a little room sitting across from the head goblin with the guards and their ornate earpieces and eyepieces providing the security he actually needed.

"We understand that Wizard Law and Goblin Law aren't quite the same thing, and we've had our differences about that. And muggle law is something else entirely, yet here it is all on paper in more words than we care for in a hundred contracts. It is important to understand when JPL writes purchase, they really mean it. There is no recovery of their purchases again. These things will be expended, and when the service life of the deep space probe these things will be part of is reached, it will be crashed into Jupiter and so ended.

"It wouldn't be fair for me to tell you what other prices are for other components, nor quite fair to tell you the scale of this thing, but I can tell you that if you asked the weight of fifty thousand galleons in lump gold for these small things, it would be approved without them even considering if the price is reasonable. On the other hand, I don't know if you actually can make these things. Submitting a proposal that you can't deliver is a bad idea. Yet they do want these things, and anybody in this market should know, deliver well and there's more to come."

And of course Griphook's greed got the best of him, despite having to agree to using Alastor Moody as an intermediary. Not that he charged much.

NASA was indeed moving slow. The first test of the Alcubarre drive would be on board the Juno space probe. They lacked the power generation required to use it anywhere near its full potential, but they had figured something out. The warp drive and the Oberth effect had a strange interplay and they could get more acceleration out of their Hydrazine engines by using one at the same time. At low power level, they hoped they could get ten percent more efficiency at their gravitational slingshots. But in this mission they planned for failure. The Juno space probe had enough fuel onboard to carry out its primary mission anyway, thus on arrival at Jupiter they hoped to stay on science station a lot longer. But if it worked reliably the next deep space probe and the next would use them.

NASA was playing the long game. Years down the line, they hoped to pull off what had never been done and send a deep space probe to another star. This would require use of the Alcubarre drive and a nuclear reactor to power it. Getting approval to launch a nuclear reactor was hard in this era. They would use the dream of man to sell it. This would be no fraud, for this was always the plan. Mankind would reach for the stars if given even a shadow of a chance of doing so.

High above the earth, beyond the moon's orbit, there was a satellite that man did not place there. It was waiting for a signal it saw thrice before. The sign that man was ready to set sail for the stars and find he was not alone. But would the watchers be ready?


	25. Chapter 138: Evidence

July 2018, NASA HQ

Astrobiological Announcement, Guest speaker Michael Evans-Verres

The direct audience was very small. Several senior members of JPL had spoken on fulfilling the dream of the space program, that of finding life elsewhere in the universe. Michael Evans-Verres had become the world leader in exobiology because his priors were just simply too good. Nobody knew how, but he seemed to understand the significance of any advance somehow before hearing it. On taking the podium, Michael noticed his old friend Alastor had somehow gotten in behind the press. Now that just took the cake, didn't it.

"Today I want to speak to you about evidence", Michael began. "Methanethanol and dimethyl sulphide are interesting chemicals indeed. But what they don't say is far more than what they say. What we have here is an area that accumulated a bunch of organic compounds, buried them, and left them under the surface to break down slowly enough from radition that we would find them after billions of years.

"What we want to find is a second origin of life. We want to change the prior for life's existance to one of billions of stars to two. While we would like it to be two out of eight, the evidence before us simply does not support that claim. Twenty years ago I heard a credible claim from a young-earth creationist" that last word spoken with a hint of spite, as though he knew that his audience would know what to think of their scientific knowledge "that we would find life on Mars if we looked long enough. The scenario runs something like this. Of every hundred fragments of rock ejected from Earth by collisions, about ten or so end up on Mars. Certain bacteria, fungi (particularly certain yeasts), some protists, and the water bear can survive the journey to Mars riding inside such a rock. If Mars were ever suitable for growing life, we would find ancient primitive earth life had been growing on Mars.

"It is likely that Mars was preseeded by comets and asteroids rich in proto-biological material like Earth was. Mars is barren now because its gravity is too low to hold an atmosphere of water. Ladies and Gentlemen, what we have here is quite good evidence that Mars was indeed preseeded and this seed material was eaten by some primitive life forms, quite possibly sulpher-loving archaebacteria. What we do not have here is any evidence at all of indipdendent life origin on Mars. We know life first appeared on Earth about 4.5 billion years ago, as soon as Earth was sufficiently cool. We have found Mars rocks on Earth. The probability of Earth life making it to mars is simply too good.

"The transfer of life on ejected rocks has good explaining power, for life should have gone extinct on early Earth several times from impacts that remelted the crust, but life always seemed to surive them like nothing happened.

"I say to you, I would be the first to celebrate on good evidence of Mars having its own life origin, but that task is not so easily accomplished. When you find life on Mars (and I expect you will), or any enzyme, or intact nuclear material, I shall gladly look at it and we shall see. If the principles by which that life works are utterly different from Earth life it shall be time to celebrate. If the are the same, than transfer of life from Earth to Mars or possibly transfer of life from Mars to Earth is a much more reasonable scenario. Today I expect the latter.

"But we are not alone, of that I am certain. Reach for the stars, for only then will you find what you seek."

"Thank you."


End file.
